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) avail‐
       able 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 com‐
	      mands.  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 parameter, 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.ker‐
       nel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/.



util-linux					June 2011					 MKFS(8)