*mkfs.minix* creates a Linux MINIX filesystem on a device (usually a disk partition).
The _device_ is usually of the following form:
....
/dev/hda[1-8] (IDE disk 1)
/dev/hdb[1-8] (IDE disk 2)
/dev/sda[1-8] (SCSI disk 1)
/dev/sdb[1-8] (SCSI disk 2)
....
The device may be a block device or an image file of one, but this is not enforced. Expect not much fun on a character device :-).
The _size-in-blocks_ parameter is the desired size of the file system, in blocks. It is present only for backwards compatibility. If omitted the size will be determined automatically. Only block counts strictly greater than 10 and strictly less than 65536 are allowed.
Specify the maximum length of filenames. Currently, the only allowable values are 14 and 30 for file system versions 1 and 2. Version 3 allows only value 60. The default is 30.
Use exclusive BSD lock for device or file it operates. The optional argument _mode_ can be *yes*, *no* (or 1 and 0) or *nonblock*. If the _mode_ argument is omitted, it defaults to *"yes"*. This option overwrites environment variable *$LOCK_BLOCK_DEVICE*. The default is not to use any lock at all, but it's recommended to avoid collisions with udevd or other tools.