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 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 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 default
              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.

       -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 text and exit.

BUGS

       All  generic  options  must  precede and not be combined with filesystem-specific options.
       Some filesystem-specific programs do not automatically detect 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)

AVAILABILITY

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