.\" Copyright 1992, 1993, 1994 Rickard E. Faith (faith@cs.unc.edu)
.\" May be freely distributed.
.\" " for emacs hilit19 mode
.TH MKFS 8 "10 January 1994" "Linux 0.99" "Linux Programmer's Manual"
.SH NAME
mkfs \- make a Linux MINIX filesystem
.SH SYNOPSIS
.BR "mkfs [ \-c ] [ \-n"
namelength
.B ] [ \-i
inodecount
.B ]
device size-in-blocks
.br
.B "mkfs [ \-l"
filename
.B ]
device size-in-blocks
.SH DESCRIPTION
.B mkfs
creates a Linux MINIX file-system on a device (usually a disk partition).

The
.I device
is usually of the following form:

.nf
.RS
/dev/hda[1-8]
/dev/hdb[1-8]
/dev/sda[1-8]
/dev/sdb[1-8]
.RE
.fi

The
.I size-in-blocks
parameter is the desired size of the file system, in blocks.  This
information can be determined from the
.BR fdisk (8)
program.  Only block counts strictly greater than 10 and strictly less than
65536 are allowed.
.SH OPTIONS
.TP
.B \-c
Check the device for bad blocks before creating the file system.  If any
are found, the count is printed.
.TP
.BI \-n " namelength"
Specify the maximum length of filenames.  No space is allowed between the
.B \-n
and the
.IR namelength.  Currently, the only allowable
values are 14 and 30.
.B 30 is the default.
.TP
.BI \-i " inodecount"
Specify the number of inodes for the filesystem.
.TP
.BI \-l " filename"
Read the bad blocks list from
.IR filename .
The file has one bad block number per line.  The count of bad blocks read
is printed.
.SH "EXIT CODES"
The exit code returned by
.B mkfs.minix
is one of the following:
.IP 0
No errors
.IP 8
Operational error
.IP 16
Usage or syntax error
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.BR fsck (8),
.BR mkefs (8),
.BR efsck (8),
.BR reboot (8)
.SH AUTHOR
Linus Torvalds (torvalds@cs.helsinki.fi)
.br
Error code values by Rik Faith (faith@cs.unc.edu)
.br
Inode request feature by Scott Heavner (sdh@po.cwru.edu)
.br
Support for the file system valid flag by Dr. Wettstein
(greg%wind.uucp@plains.nodak.edu)
.br
Check to prevent mkfs of mounted filesystem and boot sector clearing
by Daniel Quinlan (quinlan@yggdrasil.com)