# mkfs

## 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.
    


## 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/>. This page is
           part of the _util-linux_ (a random collection of Linux utilities)
           project. Information about the project can be found at 
           ⟨https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/⟩. If you have a
           bug report for this manual page, send it to
           util-linux@vger.kernel.org. This page was obtained from the
           project's upstream Git repository
           ⟨git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/utils/util-linux/util-linux.git⟩ on
           2025-08-11. (At that time, the date of the most recent commit that
           was found in the repository was 2025-08-05.) If you discover any
           rendering problems in this HTML version of the page, or you
           believe there is a better or more up-to-date source for the page,
           or you have corrections or improvements to the information in this
           COLOPHON (which is _not_ part of the original manual page), send a
           mail to man-pages@man7.org
    
    util-linux 2.42-start-521-ec46  2025-01-16                        _MKFS_(8)
    


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