NAME

       wipefs - wipe a filesystem signature from a device

SYNOPSIS

       wipefs [-ahnpV] [-o offset] device

DESCRIPTION

       wipefs  can  erase  filesystem  or  raid signatures (magic strings) from the specified device to make the
       filesystem invisible for libblkid.  wipefs does not erase the filesystem itself nor any other  data  from
       the  device.   When  used  without  options -a or -o, it lists all visible filesystems and the offsets of
       their signatures.

OPTIONS

       -a, --all
              Erase all available signatures.

       -h, --help
              Print help and exit.

       -n, --no-act
              Causes everything to be done except for the write() call.

       -o, --offset offset
              Specify the location (in bytes) of the signature which should be  erased  from  the  device.   The
              offset  number  may include a "0x" prefix; then the number will be interpreted as a hex value.  It
              is possible to specify multiple -o options.

              The offset argument may be followed by binary (2^N) suffixes KiB, MiB, GiB, TiB, PiB and EiB  (the
              "iB"  is  optional, e.g. "K" has the same meaning as "KiB") or decimal (10^N) suffixes KB, MB, GB,
              PB and EB.

       -p, --parsable
              Print out in parsable instead of printable format.  Encode all potentially unsafe characters of  a
              string to the corresponding hex value prefixed by '\x'.

       -V, --version
              Output version information and exit.

AUTHOR

       Karel Zak <kzak@redhat.com>.

AVAILABILITY

       The    wipefs    command    is    part    of    the    util-linux   package   and   is   available   from
       ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/.

SEE ALSO

       blkid(8) findfs(8)

util-linux                                        October 2009                                         WIPEFS(8)