*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.
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.
Display version information and exit. (Option *-V* will display version information only when it is the only parameter, otherwise it will work as *--verbose*.)
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.