mkfs is used to build a Linux file system on a device, usually
a hard disk partition.
filesys is either the device name (e.g.
/dev/hda1 , /dev/sdb2 ) or the mount point (e.g.
/ , /usr , /home ) for the file system.
blocks is the number of blocks to be used for the file system.
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 file system builders
(mkfs.fstype)
available under Linux.
The file system-specific builder is searched for in a number
of directories like perhaps
/sbin , /sbin/fs , /sbin/fs.d , /etc/fs , /etc (the precise list is defined at compile time but at least
contains
/sbin and
/sbin/fs ), and finally in the directories
listed in the PATH environment variable.
Please see the file system-specific builder manual pages for
further details.
OPTIONS
-V
Produce verbose output, including all file system-specific commands
that are executed.
Specifying this option more than once inhibits execution of any
file system-specific commands.
This is really only useful for testing.
-t fstype
Specifies the type of file system to be built.
If not specified, the default file system type
(currently ext2) is used.
fs-options
File system-specific options to be passed to the real file
system builder.
Although not guaranteed, the following options are supported
by most file system builders.
-c
Check the device for bad blocks before building the file system.
-l filename
Read the bad blocks list from
filename
-v
Produce verbose output.
BUGS
All generic options must precede and not be combined with
file system-specific options.
Some file system-specific programs do not support the
-v (verbose) option, nor return meaningful exit codes.
Also, some file system-specific programs do not automatically
detect the device size and require the
blocks 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 file system.
