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.
