mkfs - build a Linux filesystem
mkfs [options] [-t type]
[fs-options] device [size]
This mkfs frontend is deprecated in favour of filesystem specific mkfs.<type> utils.
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 status 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
via your PATH environment setting only. Please see the
filesystem-specific builder manual pages for further details.
-t, --type type
Specify the
typeof 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 commands that are executed. Specifying this option more than once inhibits execution of any filesystem-specific commands. This is really only useful for testing.
-h, --help
Display help text and exit.
-V, --version
Print version and exit. (Option -V will display version information only when it is the only parameter, otherwise it will work as --verbose.)
All generic options must precede and not be combined with
filesystem-specific options. Some filesystem-specific programs do not
automatically detect the device size and require the size
parameter to be specified.
The manual page was shamelessly adapted from Remy Card’s version for the ext2 filesystem.
For bug reports, use the issue tracker at <https://github.com/util-linux/util-linux/issues>.
The mkfs command is part of the util-linux package
which can be downloaded from Linux Kernel Archive
<https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/>.