mkfs(8) - Linux man page
Name
mkfs - build a Linux file systemSynopsis
mkfs [-V] [-t fstype] [fs-options] filesys [blocks]Description
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 file system builders (mkfs.fstype) available under Linux. The file system-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 file system-specific builder manual pages for further details.
Options
- -V
- Produce verbose output, including all file system-specific commands that are executed. Specifying this option more than once inhibits execution of any file system-specific commands. This is really only useful for testing.
- -t fstype
- Specifies the type of file system to be built. If not specified, the default file system type (currently ext2) is used.
- fs-options
- File system-specific options to be passed to the real file system builder. Although not guaranteed, the following options are supported by most file system builders.
- -c
- Check the device for bad blocks before building the file system.
- -l filename
- Read the bad blocks list from filename
- -v
- Produce verbose output.
Bugs
All generic options must precede and not be combined with file system-specific options. Some file system-specific programs do not support the -v (verbose) option, nor return meaningful exit codes. Also, some file system-specific programs do not automatically detect the device size and require the blocks 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 file system.
