MKFS(8)			     System Administration		       MKFS(8)

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 status 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.

       -h, --help
	   Display help text and exit.

       -V, --version
	   Display version and exit.  (Option -V will display version
	   information only when it is the only parameter, otherwise it will
	   work as --verbose.)

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)

REPORTING BUGS
       For bug reports, use the issue tracker
       <https://github.com/util-linux/util-linux/issues>.

AVAILABILITY
       The mkfs command is part of the util-linux package which can be
       downloaded from Linux Kernel Archive
       <https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/>.

util-linux 2.41.2		  2025-09-22			       MKFS(8)