Provided by: udftools_2.0-2_amd64 
NAME
mkudffs - create an UDF filesystem
SYNOPSIS
mkudffs [ options ] device [ blocks-count ]
DESCRIPTION
mkudffs is used to create a UDF filesystem on a device (usually a disk). device is the
special file corresponding to the device (e.g. /dev/hdX) or file image. blocks-count is
the number of blocks on the device. If omitted, mkudffs automagically figures the
filesystem size. The order of options matters. Encoding option must be first and options
to override default settings implied by the media type or UDF revision should be after the
option they are overriding.
OPTIONS
-h,--help
Display the usage and list of options.
-l,--label= label
Specify the UDF label. UDF label is synonym for specifying both --lvid and --vid
options. If omitted, mkudffs label is LinuxUDF. (Option available since mkudffs
1.1)
-u,--uuid= uuid
Specify the UDF uuid. Must be exactly 16 hexadecimal lowercase digits and is used
for first 16 characters of --fullvsid option. If omitted, mkudffs uuid is generated
from local time and random number. (Option available since mkudffs 1.1)
-b,--blocksize= block-size
Specify the size of blocks in bytes. Valid block size for a UDF filesystem is power
of two in range from 512 to 32768 and must match a device logical (sector) size. If
omitted, mkudffs block-size is set to device logical block (sector) size. If
logical block (sector) size is unknown (e.g. when creating disk image) then for
--media-type=hd is used block-size 512 and for other media types 2048.
-m,--media-type= media-type
Specify the media type. Must be specified before --udfrev. Valid media types are:
hd (default) HD (Hard Disk)
worm WORM (Write Once Read Many)
mo MO (Magneto Optical)
cd CD-ROM (CD Read-Only Memory)
cdr CD-R (CD Recordable)
cdrw CD-RW (CD Read-Write)
dvd DVD-ROM (DVD Read-Only Memory)
dvdr DVD-R (DVD Recordable)
dvdrw DVD-RW (DVD Read-Write)
dvdram DVD-RAM (DVD Random Access Memory)
bdr BD-R (Blu-ray Disc Recordable)
(Short option variant -m and values cd, dvdr, bdr are available since mkudffs 2.0)
-r,--udfrev= udf-revision
Specify the UDF revision to use, either in hexadecimal (e.g. 0x0201) or decimal
(e.g. 2.01) format. Valid revisions arei 1.02, 1.50, 2.00, 2.01, 2.50 and 2.60. If
omitted, mkudffs udf-revision is 2.01, except for Blu-ray Discs which is 2.50. UDF
revisions higher then 2.01 are experimental. Option must be specified after
--media-type. (Values in decimal format and revisions higher then 2.01 are
supported since mkudffs 2.0)
-n,--no-write
Not really, do not write to device. Just simulate and display what would happen
with device. Useful for determining calculated location of different UDF blocks.
(Option available since mkudffs 2.0)
--new-file
Create a new image file specified by device with blocks-count and fail if file
already exists. If omitted, mkudffs creates a new image file only in case it does
not exist yet. (Option available since mkudffs 2.0)
--lvid= logical-volume-identifier
Specify the Logical Volume Identifier. If omitted, mkudffs
logical-volume-identifier is LinuxUDF. Most UDF implementations uses this
identifier as a disk label.
--vid= volume-identifier
Specify the Volume Identifier. If omitted, mkudffs volume-identifier is LinuxUDF.
--vsid= volume-set-identifier
Specify the 17.-127. character of Volume Set Identifier. If omitted, mkudffs
volume-set-identifier is LinuxUDF.
--fsid= file-set-identifier
Specify the File Set Identifier. If omitted, mkudffs file-set-identifier is
LinuxUDF.
--fullvsid= full-volume-set-identifier
Specify the full Volume Set Identifier. Overwrite previous --uuid and --vsid
options. (Option available since mkudffs 1.1)
--uid= uid
Specify the uid of the root (/) directory. If omitted, mkudffs uid is 0. Special
value -1 means invalid or not specified uid. (Option available since mkudffs 1.1)
--gid= gid
Specify the gid of the root (/) directory. If omitted, mkudffs gid is 0. Special
value -1 means invalid or not specified gid. (Option available since mkudffs 1.1)
--mode= mode
Specify permissions in octal mode bits of the root (/) directory. If omitted,
mkudffs mode is 0755. (Option available since mkudffs 2.0)
--bootarea= fill
Specify how to fill UDF boot area which is first 32kB of disk and is not used by
UDF itself. Option mbr make sense only when running mkudffs on whole disk, not on
just one partition. Valid options are:
preserve preserve existing UDF boot area, do not touch it (default for
media type different from hd)
erase erase existing UDF boot area, fill it by zeros (default for hd
media type on partitions and on removable disks)
mbr put MBR table with one partition which starts at sector 0
(includes MBR itself) and spans whole disk device, needed only
for non-removable hard disks used on Microsoft Windows systems
(default for hd media type on non-removable hard disk without
partitions), see section WHOLE DISK VS PARTITION
(Option available since mkudffs 2.0)
--strategy= strategy
Specify the allocation strategy to use. Valid strategies are 4 and 4096. If
omitted, mkudffs strategy is based on the --media-type.
--spartable, --spartable= spartable-number
Enable usage Sparing Table. Optionally specify also the number of sparing tables.
Valid numbers are 1-4. When spartable-number is omitted then two tables are written
to disc. If option is omitted then usage of Sparing Table depends on media type.
(Option prior to mkudffs 2.0 was available only for cdrw media type)
--sparspace= num-of-entires
Specify the number of entries in Sparing Table. If omitted, default number of
entries is 1024, but depends on media type. (Option available since mkudffs 2.0)
--packetlen= length
Packet length in number of blocks for Sparing Table. It specify also size of the
Sparing Space. If omitted, default value for DVD discs 16 blocks, otherwise 32.
--vat Enable usage of Virtual Allocation Table (VAT). If omitted, usage depends on media
type. (Option available since mkudffs 2.0)
--closed
Close disc with Virtual Allocation Table. AVDP is written also to the end of disc.
By default disc with Virtual Allocation Table is not closed.
--space= space
Specify the Space Set. Unallocated Space Set is used for media which blocks may be
allocated immediately. Freed Space Set is used for media which blocks needs to be
specially prepared/erased before allocation. In Space Table is stored list of
unallocated extents. In Space Bitmap is stored bitmap of unallocated blocks. Not
used for VAT.
freedbitmap Freed Bitmap
freedtable Freed Table
unallocbitmap Unallocated Bitmap (default)
unalloctable Unallocated Table
--ad= ad
Specify the Allocation Descriptors of the root (/) directory.
inicb Allocation Descriptors in ICB (default)
short Short Allocation Descriptors
long Long Allocation Descriptors
--noefe
Don't Use Extended File Entries for the root (/) directory. Affects only UDF 2.00
or higher. Must be specified after --udfrev.
--locale
Treat identifier string options as strings encoded according to current locale
settings (default). Must be specified as first argument. (Option available since
mkudffs 2.0)
--u8 Treat identifier string options as strings encoded in 8-bit OSTA Compressed Unicode
format, equivalent to Latin1 (ISO-8859-1). Must be specified as first argument.
--u16 Treat identifier string options as strings encoded in 16-bit OSTA Compressed
Unicode format, equivalent to UCS-2BE. Note that it is not possible to include zero
byte in command line options, therefore any character which has at least one zero
byte cannot be supplied (this applies to all Latin1 characters). Must be specified
as first argument.
--utf8 Treat identifier string options as strings encoded in UTF-8. Must be specified as
first argument.
COMPATIBILITY
OPERATING SYSTEMS SUPPORT
UDF filesystem is natively supported by large amount of operating systems. See following
compatibility table:
┌────────────────────────────┬──────────────────────────┐
│ Operating system │ Maximum UDF revision for │
├─────────┬──────────────────┼────────────┬─────────────┤
│ Name │ Version │ read │ write │
├─────────┼──────────────────┼────────────┼─────────────┤
│ │ 2.3.17 - 2.4.5 │ 2.00 │ 2.00 │
│Linux │ 2.4.6 - 2.6.25 │ 2.01 │ 2.01 │
│ │ 2.6.26 (and new) │ 2.50 │ 2.01 │
├─────────┼──────────────────┼────────────┼─────────────┤
│ │ 98/Me │ 1.02 │ none │
│Windows │ 2000 │ 1.50 │ none │
│ │ XP │ 2.01 │ none │
│ │ Vista (and new) │ 2.60 │ 2.50 │
├─────────┼──────────────────┼────────────┼─────────────┤
│Mac OS │ 8.1 - 8.5 │ 1.02 │ none │
│ │ 8.6 - 9.2 │ 1.50 │ 1.50 │
├─────────┼──────────────────┼────────────┼─────────────┤
│ │ 10.0 - 10.3 │ 1.50 │ 1.50 │
│Mac OS X │ 10.4 │ 2.01 │ 2.01 │
│ │ 10.5 (and new) │ 2.60 │ 2.50 │
├─────────┼──────────────────┼────────────┼─────────────┤
│FreeBSD │ 5 (and new) │ 1.50 │ none │
├─────────┼──────────────────┼────────────┼─────────────┤
│NetBSD │ 4.0 │ 2.60 │ none │
│ │ 5.0 (and new) │ 2.60 │ 2.60 │
├─────────┼──────────────────┼────────────┼─────────────┤
│ │ 3.8 - 3.9 │ 1.02 │ │
│OpenBSD │ 4.0 - 4.6 │ 1.50 │ none │
│ │ 4.7 (and new) │ 2.60 │ │
├─────────┼──────────────────┼────────────┼─────────────┤
│Solaris │ 7 (and new) │ 1.50 │ 1.50 │
├─────────┼──────────────────┼────────────┼─────────────┤
│AIX │ 5.2 (and new) │ 2.01 │ 2.01 │
└─────────┴──────────────────┴────────────┴─────────────┘
Note that Windows 98 and Windows Me can read UDF filesystem only from CD and DVD optical
discs, not from hard disks.
BLOCK SIZE
In most cases operating systems are unable to mount UDF filesystem if UDF block size
differs from logical sector size of device. Typically hard disks have sector size 512
bytes and optical media 2048 bytes. Therefore UDF block size must match logical sector
size of device.
Linux kernel prior to version 2.6.30 used hardcoded UDF block size of 2048 bytes
independently of logical sector size, therefore it was not able to automatically mount UDF
filesystem if block size differed from 2048. Since 2.6.30 and prior to 4.11 Linux kernel
used logical sector size of device as UDF block size, plus it tried fallback to 2048.
Since 4.11 it uses logical sector size and fallbacks to any valid block size between
logical sector size and 4096. Therefore since version 2.6.30 Linux kernel can
automatically mount UDF filesystems correctly if UDF block size matches device logical
sector size and since version 4.11 can automatically also mount devices which sector size
does not match UDF block size. In any case and also for Linux kernel prior to version
2.6.30, different UDF block size (which is not autodetected) can be manually specified via
bs=blocksize mount parameter.
WHOLE DISK VS PARTITION
UDF filesystem is supposed to be formatted on the whole media and not to the partitioned
hard disk. Mac OS X systems enforce this rule and reject to automatically mount UDF
filesystem unless it is formatted on the whole unpartitioned hard disk. Possible partition
table (e.g. MBR or GPT) on disk with valid UDF filesystem is ignored. On the other hand
Microsoft Windows systems are unable to detect non-removable hard disks without MBR or GPT
partition table. Removable disks do not have this restriction. Consequence is that non-
removable hard disks formatted to UDF by Windows Vista+ are not recognized by Mac OS X
systems and vice-versa. Note that manual mount of UDF partition on partitioned hard disk
on Mac OS X system is possible and working (e.g. by running commands mkdir
/Volumes/DriveName && mount_udf /dev/disk1s1 /Volumes/DriveName). But there is no known
way to mount unpartitioned non-removable disk on Windows system.
Thanks to reserved and unused UDF boot area (first 32kB of UDF filesystem) it is possible
to deal with this problem, by putting MBR on such non-removable hard disk just for
compatibility reasons with Windows. Such MBR table would contain one partition which
starts at sector 0 (includes MBR itself) and span whole disk device. So the whole disk
device and also first partition on disk points to same sectors. Therefore UDF filesystem
can be mounted either from whole disk device (needed for Mac OS X systems) or from first
partition (needed for Microsoft Windows systems).
Linux kernel ignores MBR table if contains partition which starts at sector 0. Normally
Linux kernel can detect and mount UDF filesystem either on partition or on whole disk
device. It does not have any restrictions.
mkudffs option --bootarea=mbr put such MBR table for compatibility with Microsoft Windows
systems into disk when formatting.
LINUX LABEL BUGS
In most cases Logical Volume Identifier is used as UDF label. But Linux libblkid prior to
version 2.26 used Volume Identifier. Therefore mkudffs --label for compatibility reasons
set both Logical Volume Identifier and Volume Identifier.
Linux libblkid prior to version 2.30 incorrectly processed non-ASCII identifier strings
encoded in 8-bit OSTA Compressed Unicode format. Therefore mkudffs since version 2.0 for
compatibility reasons tries to encode non-ASCII identifier strings in 16-bit OSTA
Compressed Unicode format and then fallbacks to 8-bit format.
For more information about UDF Label and UUID see udflabel(8) section UDF LABEL AND UUID.
EXIT STATUS
mkudffs returns 0 if successful, non-zero if there are problems.
LIMITATIONS
mkudffs cannot create UDF 2.50 Metadata partition, therefore it does not support UDF
revisions higher then 2.01 for non Write Once media yet. So there is no support for
Blu-ray discs which needs UDF 2.50 (except for Blu-ray Disc Recordable which does not
require Metadata partition).
BUGS
mkudffs prior to version 1.1 was unable to process non-ASCII characters from identifier
strings in --utf8 mode, --vsid option was completely broken and --blocksize must have been
manually specified for hard disks as default value was hardcoded for optical disks.
mkudffs prior to version 2.0 generated broken and unreadable cdr disc images.
AUTHOR
Ben Fennema <bfennema@falcon.csc.calpoly.edu>
Pali Rohár <pali.rohar@gmail.com>
AVAILABILITY
mkudffs is part of the udftools package and is available from
https://github.com/pali/udftools/.
SEE ALSO
pktsetup(8), udflabel(8), cdrwtool(1), udfinfo(1), wrudf(1)