MKFS(8) System Administration MKFS(8) NAME mkfs - build a Linux filesystem SYNOPSIS mkfs [options] [-t type] [fs-options] device [size] DESCRIPTION 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. OPTIONS -t, --type type Specify the type of filesystem to be built. If not specified, the de- fault 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 Display version and exit. (Option -V will display version information only when it is the only parameter, otherwise it will work as --ver- bose.) BUGS All generic options must precede and not be combined with filesystem-spe- cific options. Some filesystem-specific programs do not automatically de- tect the device size and require the size 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 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) REPORTING BUGS For bug reports, use the issue tracker <https://github.com/util-linux/util-linux/issues>. AVAILABILITY 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/>. util-linux 2.41.2 2025-09-09 MKFS(8)
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | BUGS | AUTHORS | SEE ALSO | REPORTING BUGS | AVAILABILITY
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