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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.

       -V, --verbose
	      Produce  verbose	output, including all filesystem-specific com‐
	      mands 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 parameter, other‐
	      wise it will work as --verbose.)

       -h, --help
	      Display help text and exit.

BUGS
       All generic options must precede and not be combined  with  filesystem-
       specific	 options.   Some filesystem-specific programs do not automati‐
       cally detect the device size and require the size parameter to be spec‐
       ified.

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)

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