linux man page for wipefs

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  filesys-
       tems 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 <kzak@redhat.com>.

AVAILABILITY
       The wipefs command is part of the util-linux package and is available from ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/.

SEE ALSO
       blkid(8) findfs(8)

Linux								   October 2009 							 WIPEFS(8)