mkfs
build a Linux filesystem
see also :
badblocks - fsck - mkdosfs - mke2fs - mkfs.bfs - mkfs.ext2 - mkfs.ext3 - mkfs.ext4 - mkfs.minix - mkfs.msdos - mkfs.vfat
Synopsis
mkfs
[options] [-t type fs-options]
device [size]
add an example, a script, a trick and tips
examples
source
sudo mkfs -t ext3 /dev/rvd
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 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.
availability
The mkfs command is part of the util-linux package and is
available from ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/.
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.
see also
fs,
badblocks , fsck , mkdosfs ,
mke2fs , mkfs.bfs , mkfs.ext2 ,
mkfs.ext3 , mkfs.ext4 ,
mkfs.minix , mkfs.msdos ,
mkfs.vfat , mkfs.xfs,
mkfs.xiafs
authors
David Engel
(david[:at:]ods[:dot:]com)
Fred N. van Kempen (waltje[:at:]uwalt.nl.mugnet[:dot:]org)
Ron Sommeling (sommel[:at:]sci.kun[:dot:]nl)
The manual page was shamelessly adapted from Remy
Card’s version for the ext2 filesystem.