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MAKEFS(8) System Manager's Manual MAKEFS(8) NAME makefs -- create a file system image from a directory tree or a mtree manifest SYNOPSIS makefs [-DxZ] [-B endian] [-b free-blocks] [-d debug-mask] [-F mtree-specfile] [-f free-files] [-M minimum-size] [-m maximum-size] [-N userdb-dir] [-O offset] [-o fs-options] [-R roundup-size] [-S sector-size] [-s image-size] [-T timestamp] [-t fs-type] image-file directory | manifest [extra-directory ...] DESCRIPTION The utility makefs creates a file system image into image-file from the directory tree directory or from the mtree manifest manifest. If any optional directory trees are passed in the extra-directory arguments, then the directory tree of each argument will be merged into the directory or manifest first before creating image-file. No special de- vices or privileges are required to perform this task. The options are as follows: -B endian Set the byte order of the image to endian. Valid byte orders are `4321', `big', or `be' for big endian, and `1234', `little', or `le' for little endian. Some file systems may have a fixed byte order; in those cases this argument will be ignored. -b free-blocks Ensure that a minimum of free-blocks free blocks exist in the im- age. An optional `%' suffix may be provided to indicate that free-blocks indicates a percentage of the calculated image size. -D Treat duplicate paths in an mtree manifest as warnings not error. If this flag is specified more than once, warnings about dupli- cate paths are not printed at all. -d debug-mask Enable various levels of debugging, depending upon which bits are set in debug-mask. This option is intended for source debugging. debug-mask is a bit map defined in the header file makefs.h. See the source for usage, and look for defines starting with DEBUG_. -F mtree-specfile This is almost certainly not the option you are looking for. To create an image from a list of files in an mtree format manifest, specify it as the last argument on the command line, not as the argument to -F. Use mtree-specfile as an mtree(8) `specfile' specification. This option has no effect when the image is created from a mtree mani- fest rather than a directory. If a specfile entry exists in the underlying file system, its permissions and modification time will be used unless specifi- cally overridden by the specfile. An error will be raised if the type of entry in the specfile conflicts with that of an existing entry. In the opposite case (where a specfile entry does not have an en- try in the underlying file system) the following occurs: If the specfile entry is marked optional, the specfile entry is ignored. Otherwise, the entry will be created in the image, and it is nec- essary to specify at least the following parameters in the spec- file: type, mode, gname, or gid, and uname or uid, and link (in the case of symbolic links). If time is not provided, the cur- rent time will be used. If flags is not provided, the current file flags will be used. Missing regular file entries will be created as zero-length files. -f free-files Ensure that a minimum of free-files free files (inodes) exist in the image. An optional `%' suffix may be provided to indicate that free-files indicates a percentage of the calculated image size. -M minimum-size Set the minimum size of the file system image to minimum-size. -m maximum-size Set the maximum size of the file system image to maximum-size. An error will be raised if the target file system needs to be larger than this to accommodate the provided directory tree. -N userdb-dir Use the user database text file master.passwd and group database text file group from userdb-dir, rather than using the results from the system's getpwnam(3) and getgrnam(3) (and related) li- brary calls. -O offset Instead of creating the filesystem at the beginning of the file, start at offset. Valid only for ffs and msdos. -o fs-options Set file system specific options. fs-options is a comma sepa- rated list of options. Valid file system specific options are detailed below. -p Deprecated. Create a sparse file for ffs. This is the same as the preferred -Z flag. -R roundup-size Round the image up to roundup-size. roundup-size should be a multiple of the file system block size. This option only applies to the ffs file system type. -S sector-size Set the file system sector size to sector-size. Defaults to 512. -s image-size Set the size of the file system image to image-size. This is equivalent to setting both the minimum (-M) and the maximum (-m) sizes to the same value. For ffs and msdos the image-size does not include the offset. offset is not included in that size. -T timestamp Specify a timestamp to be set for all filesystem files and direc- tories created so that repeatable builds are possible. The timestamp can be a pathname, where the timestamps are derived from that file, or an integer value interpreted as the number of seconds from the Epoch. Timestamps in a mtree(5) specfile (spec- ified with -F) are used even if a default timestamp is specified. However, the timestamps in an mtree manifest are ignored if a de- fault timestamp is specified. -t fs-type Create an fs-type file system image. The following file system types are supported: ffs BSD fast file system (default). cd9660 ISO 9660 file system. msdos FAT12, FAT16, or FAT32 file system. zfs ZFS pool containing one or more file systems. -x Exclude file system nodes not explicitly listed in the specfile. -Z Create a sparse file for ffs. This is useful for virtual machine images. Where sizes are specified, a decimal number of bytes is expected. Two or more numbers may be separated by an "x" to indicate a product. Each number may have one of the following optional suffixes: b Block; multiply by 512 k Kibi; multiply by 1024 (1 KiB) m Mebi; multiply by 1048576 (1 MiB) g Gibi; multiply by 1073741824 (1 GiB) t Tebi; multiply by 1099511627776 (1 TiB) w Word; multiply by the number of bytes in an integer FFS-specific options ffs images have ffs-specific optional parameters that may be provided. Each of the options consists of a keyword, an equal sign (`='), and a value. The following keywords are supported: avgfilesize Expected average file size. avgfpdir Expected number of files per directory. bsize Block size. density Bytes per inode. If unset, will allocate the mini- mum number of inodes to represent the filesystem if no free space has been requested (free blocks or minimum size set); otherwise the larger of the newfs defaults or what is required by the free in- ode parameters if set. fsize Fragment size. label Label name of the image. maxbpg Maximum blocks per file in a cylinder group. minfree Minimum % free. optimization Optimization preference; one of `space' or `time'. extent Maximum extent size. maxbpcg Maximum total number of blocks in a cylinder group. version UFS version. 1 for FFS (default), 2 for UFS2. softupdates 0 for disable (default), 1 for enable CD9660-specific options cd9660 images have ISO9660-specific optional parameters that may be provided. The arguments consist of a keyword and, optionally, an equal sign (`='), and a value. The following keywords are supported: allow-deep-trees Allow the directory structure to exceed the maximum specified in the spec. allow-illegal-chars Allow illegal characters in filenames. This option is not implemented. allow-lowercase Allow lowercase characters in filenames. This option is not implemented. allow-max-name Allow 37 instead of 33 characters for file- names by omitting the version id. allow-multidot Allow multiple dots in a filename. applicationid Application ID of the image. bootimagedir Boot image directory. This option is not implemented. chrp-boot Write an MBR partition table to the image to allow older CHRP hardware to boot. boot-load-segment Set load segment for the boot image. bootimage Filename of a boot image in the format "sysid;filename", where "sysid" is one of `efi', `i386', `mac68k', `macppc', or `powerpc'. generic-bootimage Load a generic boot image into the first 32K of the cd9660 image. hard-disk-boot Boot image is a hard disk image. isolevel An integer representing the ISO 9660 inter- change level where "level" is either `1' or `2'. "level" `3' is not implemented. keep-bad-images Do not discard images whose write was aborted due to an error. For debugging purposes. label Label name of the image. no-boot Boot image is not bootable. no-emul-boot Boot image is a "no emulation" ElTorito im- age. no-trailing-padding Do not pad the image (apparently Linux needs the padding). omit-trailing-period Omit trailing periods in filenames. platformid Set platform ID of section header entry of the boot image. preparer Preparer ID of the image. publisher Publisher ID of the image. rockridge Use RockRidge extensions (for longer file- names, etc.). verbose Turns on verbose output. volumeid Volume set identifier of the image. msdos-specific options msdos images have MS-DOS-specific optional parameters that may be pro- vided. The arguments consist of a keyword, an equal sign (`='), and a value. The following keywords are supported (see newfs_msdos(8) for more details): backup_sector Location of the backup boot sector. block_size Block size. bootstrap Bootstrap file. bytes_per_sector Bytes per sector. create_size Create file size. directory_entries Directory entries. drive_heads Drive heads. fat_type FAT type (12, 16, or 32). floppy Preset drive parameters for standard format floppy disks (160, 180, 320, 360, 640, 720, 1200, 1232, 1440, or 2880). hidden_sectors Hidden sectors. info_sector Location of the info sector. media_descriptor Media descriptor. num_FAT Number of FATs. OEM_string OEM string. offset Offset in device. This option will be ig- nored if -O is set to a positive number. reserved_sectors Reserved sectors. sectors_per_cluster Sectors per cluster. sectors_per_fat Sectors per FAT. sectors_per_track Sectors per track. size File System size. volume_id Volume ID. volume_label Volume Label. zfs-specific options The image created by makefs contains a ZFS pool with a single vdev of type `disk'. The root dataset is always created implicitly and con- tains the entire input directory tree unless additional datasets are specified using the options described below. To keep images reproducible, the pool GUID and other random identifiers will always be the same across runs of makefs. This means that when a pool is first imported, its GUID should be reset using zpool-reguid(8) to avoid conflicting with other pools also generated by makefs; other- wise, it will not be possible to import other pools. This can be con- figured from /etc/rc.conf using the zpool_reguid variable. The arguments consist of a keyword, an equal sign (`='), and a value. The following keywords are supported: ashift The base-2 logarithm of the minimum block size. Typical values are 9 (512B blocks) and 12 (4KB blocks). The default value is 12. bootfs The name of the bootable dataset for the pool. Specifying this option causes the `bootfs' property to be set in the created pool. mssize The size of metaslabs in the created pool. By default, makefs allocates large (up to 512MB) metaslabs with the expectation that the image will be auto-expanded upon first use. This option allows the default heuristic to be overridden. verify-txgs Prompt OpenZFS to verify pool metadata dur- ing import. This is disabled by default as it may significantly increase import times. poolguid Use the specified 64-bit integer as the pool GUID. If this option is not speci- fied, the pool GUID will be random but fixed across multiple identical invocations of makefs. This option is useful for test- ing but not required for reproducibility. poolname The name of the ZFS pool. This option must be specified. rootpath An implicit path prefix added to dataset mountpoints. By default it is /<poolname>. For creating bootable pools, the rootpath should be set to /. At least one dataset must have a mountpoint equal to rootpath. fs Create an additional dataset. This option may be specified multiple times. The argu- ment value must be of the form <dataset>[;<prop1=v1>[;<prop2=v2>[;...]]], where dataset is the name of the dataset and must belong to the pool's namespace. For example, with a pool name of `test' all dataset names must be prefixed by `test/'. A dataset must exist at each level of the pool's namespace. For example, to create `test/foo/bar', `test/foo' must be created as well. The dataset mountpoints determine how the datasets are populated with files from the staged directory tree. Conceptually, all datasets are mounted before any are popu- lated with files. The root of the staged directory tree is mapped to rootpath. Dataset properties, as described in zfsprops(7), may be specified following the dataset name. The following properties may be set for a dataset: atime canmount compression exec mountpoint setuid Note that makefs does not implement com- pression of files included in the image, regardless of the value of the compression property. SEE ALSO mtree(5), rc.conf(5), zfsconcepts(7), zfsprops(7), zpoolprops(7), mtree(8), newfs(8), zpool-reguid(8) HISTORY The makefs utility appeared in NetBSD 1.6. It was ported to FreeBSD and first appeared in FreeBSD 8.0. AUTHORS Luke Mewburn <lukem@NetBSD.org> (original program), Daniel Watt, Walter Deignan, Ryan Gabrys, Alan Perez-Rathke, Ram Vedam (cd9660 support), Christos Zoulas (msdos support), Mark Johnston (zfs support). FreeBSD ports 15.quarterly January 5, 2026 MAKEFS(8)
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | SEE ALSO | HISTORY | AUTHORS
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