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1st chunk of `mkfs.man`
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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
           Print 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 at
       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 2.39.1                  2023‐06‐14                           MKFS(8)
Title: mkfs - Build a Linux Filesystem
Summary
The `mkfs` command is a frontend for building Linux filesystems on a device, typically a hard disk partition. It's deprecated in favor of filesystem-specific `mkfs.<type>` utilities. The command takes the device name and optionally the size in blocks as arguments. It supports options for specifying the filesystem type, verbose output, and displaying help or version information. The actual filesystem building is done by filesystem-specific builders found in the PATH.