MKFS(8) System Administration MKFS(8) NAME mkfs - build a Linux filesystem 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 use‐ ful 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-spe‐ cific programs do not support the -V (verbose) option, nor return meaningful exit codes. Also, some filesys‐ tem-specific programs do not automatically detect the device size and require the size parameter to be speci‐ fied. AUTHORS David Engel ([email protected]) Fred N. van Kempen ([email protected]) Ron Sommeling ([email protected]) 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)