WIPEFS(8)                                             MAINTENANCE COMMANDS                                             WIPEFS(8)



NAME
       wipefs - wipe a filesystem signature from a device

SYNOPSIS
       wipefs [-ahnp] [-o offset] device

DESCRIPTION
       wipefs allows to erase filesystem or raid signatures (magic strings) from the device to make the filesystem invisible for
       libblkid.  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.

OPTIONS
       -a, --all
              Erase all available signatures.

       -h, --help
              Print help and exit.

       -n, --no-act
              Causes everything to be done except for the write() call.

       -o, --offset offset
              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.

              The  offset  argument  may  be  followed  by  binary  (2^N)  suffixes KiB, MiB, GiB, TiB, PiB and EiB (the "iB" is
              optional, e.g. "K" has the same meaning as "KiB") or decimal (10^N) suffixes KB, MB, GB, PB and EB.

       -p, --parsable
              Print out in parsable instead of printable format. Encode all potentially unsafe characters of  a  string  to  the
              corresponding hex value prefixed by '\x'.

AUTHOR
       Karel Zak <kzakATredhat.com>.

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/.

SEE ALSO
       blkid(8) findfs(8)




Linux                                                     October 2009                                                 WIPEFS(8)