MKFS(8) 					       System Administration						   MKFS(8)



NAME
       mkfs - build a Linux filesystem

SYNOPSIS
SYNOPSIS
       mkfs [options] [-t type fs-options] device [size]

DESCRIPTION
       mkfs  is  used  to  build a Linux filesystem on a device, usually a hard disk partition.  The device argument is either the
       device name (e.g.  /dev/hda1, /dev/sdb2), or a regular file that shall contain the filesystem.  The size  argument  is  the
       number of blocks to be used for the filesystem.

       The exit code returned by mkfs is 0 on success and 1 on failure.

       In  actuality,  mkfs  is  simply  a front-end for the various filesystem builders (mkfs.fstype) available under Linux.  The
       filesystem-specific builder is searched for in a number of directories, like perhaps /sbin, /sbin/fs, /sbin/fs.d,  /etc/fs,
       /etc (the precise list is defined at compile time but at least contains /sbin and /sbin/fs), and finally in the directories
       listed in the PATH environment variable.  Please see the filesystem-specific builder manual pages for further details.

OPTIONS
       -t, --type type
	      Specify the type of filesystem to be built.  If not specified, the default filesystem type (currently ext2) is used.

       fs-options
	      Filesystem-specific options to be passed to the real filesystem builder.	Although  not  guaranteed,  the  following
	      options are supported by most filesystem builders.

       -V, --verbose
	      Produce  verbose	output, including all filesystem-specific commands that are executed.  Specifying this option more
	      than once inhibits execution of any filesystem-specific commands.  This is really only useful for testing.

       -V, --version
	      Display version information and exit.  (Option -V will display version information only when it is the only  parame‐
	      ter, otherwise it will work as --verbose.)

       -h, --help
	      Display help and exit.

BUGS
       All  generic  options must precede and not be combined with filesystem-specific options.  Some filesystem-specific programs
       do not support the -V (verbose) option, nor return meaningful exit codes.  Also, some filesystem-specific programs  do  not
       automatically detect the device size and require the size parameter to be specified.

AUTHORS
       David Engel (david@ods.com)
       Fred N. van Kempen (waltje@uwalt.nl.mugnet.org)
       Ron Sommeling (sommel@sci.kun.nl)
       The manual page was shamelessly adapted from Remy Card's version for the ext2 filesystem.

SEE ALSO
       fs(5),  badblocks(8), fsck(8), mkdosfs(8), mke2fs(8), mkfs.bfs(8), mkfs.ext2(8), mkfs.ext3(8), mkfs.ext4(8), mkfs.minix(8),
       mkfs.msdos(8), mkfs.vfat(8), mkfs.xfs(8), mkfs.xiafs(8)

AVAILABILITY
       The mkfs command is part of the util-linux package and is available from ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/.



util-linux						     June 2011							   MKFS(8)