.\" -*- nroff -*-
.\" Copyright 2009 by Karel Zak.  All Rights Reserved.
.\" This file may be copied under the terms of the GNU Public License.
.\"
.TH WIPEFS 8 "October 2009" "Linux" "MAINTENANCE COMMANDS"
.SH NAME
wipefs \- wipe a filesystem signature from a device
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B wipefs
.RB [ \-ahnp ]
.RB [ \-o
.IR offset ]
.I device
.SH DESCRIPTION
.B wipefs
allows to erase filesystem or raid signatures (magic strings) from the
.I device
to make the device invisible for libblkid.
.B wipefs
does not erase the whole filesystem or any other data from the device.
When used without options -a or -o, it lists all visible filesystems and offsets
of their signatures.
.SH OPTIONS
.IP "\fB\-a, \-\-all\fP"
Erase all available signatures.
.IP "\fB\-h, \-\-help\fP"
Print help and exit.
.IP "\fB\-n, \-\-no\-act\fP"
Causes everything to be done except for the write() call.
.IP "\fB\-o, \-\-offset\fP \fIoffset\fP
Specifies location (in bytes) of the signature which should be erased from the
device. The offset number may include a "0x" prefix, and then the number will be
read as a hex value. It is possible to specify multiple -o options.
.IP "\fB\-p, \-\-parsable\fP"
Print out in parsable instead of printable format. Encode all potentially unsafe
characters of a string to the corresponding hex value prefixed by '\\x'.
.SH AUTHOR
Karel Zak <kzak@redhat.com>.
.SH AVAILABILITY
The wipefs command is part of the util-linux-ng package and is available from
ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux-ng/.
.SH SEE ALSO
.BR blkid (8)
.BR findfs (8)