1MKFS(8)                      System Administration                     MKFS(8)
2
3
4

NAME

6       mkfs - build a Linux filesystem
7

SYNOPSIS

9       mkfs [options] [-t type] [fs-options] device [size]
10

DESCRIPTION

12       This mkfs frontend is deprecated in favour of filesystem specific
13       mkfs.<type> utils.
14
15       mkfs is used to build a Linux filesystem on a device, usually a hard
16       disk partition. The device argument is either the device name (e.g.,
17       /dev/hda1, /dev/sdb2), or a regular file that shall contain the
18       filesystem. The size argument is the number of blocks to be used for
19       the filesystem.
20
21       The exit status returned by mkfs is 0 on success and 1 on failure.
22
23       In actuality, mkfs is simply a front-end for the various filesystem
24       builders (mkfs.fstype) available under Linux. The filesystem-specific
25       builder is searched for via your PATH environment setting only. Please
26       see the filesystem-specific builder manual pages for further details.
27

OPTIONS

29       -t, --type type
30           Specify the type of filesystem to be built. If not specified, the
31           default filesystem type (currently ext2) is used.
32
33       fs-options
34           Filesystem-specific options to be passed to the real filesystem
35           builder.
36
37       -V, --verbose
38           Produce verbose output, including all filesystem-specific commands
39           that are executed. Specifying this option more than once inhibits
40           execution of any filesystem-specific commands. This is really only
41           useful for testing.
42
43       -h, --help
44           Display help text and exit.
45
46       -V, --version
47           Print version and exit. (Option -V will display version information
48           only when it is the only parameter, otherwise it will work as
49           --verbose.)
50

BUGS

52       All generic options must precede and not be combined with
53       filesystem-specific options. Some filesystem-specific programs do not
54       automatically detect the device size and require the size parameter to
55       be specified.
56

AUTHORS

58       David Engel <david@ods.com>, Fred N. van Kempen
59       <waltje@uwalt.nl.mugnet.org>, Ron Sommeling <sommel@sci.kun.nl>.
60
61       The manual page was shamelessly adapted from Remy Card’s version for
62       the ext2 filesystem.
63

SEE ALSO

65       fs(5), badblocks(8), fsck(8), mkdosfs(8), mke2fs(8), mkfs.bfs(8),
66       mkfs.ext2(8), mkfs.ext3(8), mkfs.ext4(8), mkfs.minix(8), mkfs.msdos(8),
67       mkfs.vfat(8), mkfs.xfs(8)
68

REPORTING BUGS

70       For bug reports, use the issue tracker at
71       https://github.com/util-linux/util-linux/issues.
72

AVAILABILITY

74       The mkfs command is part of the util-linux package which can be
75       downloaded from Linux Kernel Archive
76       <https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/>.
77
78
79
80util-linux 2.38                   2022-02-17                           MKFS(8)
Impressum