WIPEFS(8) System Administration WIPEFS(8)NAMEwipefs - wipe a signature from a device
SYNOPSISwipefs [-ahnptV] [-o offset] device...
DESCRIPTIONwipefs can erase filesystem, raid or partition table signatures (magic
strings) from the specified device to make the signature invisible for
libblkid.
wipefs does not erase the filesystem itself nor any other data from the
device. When used without options -a or -o, it lists all visible
filesystems and the offsets of their basic signatures.
Note that some filesystems or some partition tables store more magic
strings on the devices. The wipefs lists the first offset where a magic
string has been detected. The device is not scanned for additional
magic strings for the same filesystem. It's possible that after wipefs-o <offset> will be the same filesystem or partition table visible by
another magic string on another offset.
When used with option -a then all for libblkid visible magic strings
are erased.
OPTIONS-a, --all
Erase all available signatures. This set of erased signatures
could be restricted by -t <list> option.
-f, --force
Force erasure, even if the filesystem is mounted. This is
required in order to erase the partition table on a block
device.
-h, --help
Print help and exit.
-n, --no-act
Causes everything to be done except for the write() call.
-o, --offset offset
Specify the location (in bytes) of the signature which should be
erased from the device. The offset number may include a "0x"
prefix; then the number will be interpreted as a hex value. It
is possible to specify multiple -o options.
The offset argument may be followed by the multiplicative suf‐
fixes KiB=1024, MiB=1024*1024, and so on for GiB, TiB, PiB, EiB,
ZiB and YiB (the "iB" is optional, e.g. "K" has the same meaning
as "KiB") or the suffixes KB=1000, MB=1000*1000, and so on for
GB, PB, EB, ZB and YB.
-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'.
-q, --quiet
Suppress output messages after successful signature wipe.
-t, --types list
Used to limit the set of printed or erased signatures. More than
one type may be specified in a comma-separated list. The list
of types or individual types can be prefixed with 'no' to spec‐
ify the types on which no action should be taken. For more
details see mount(8).
-V, --version
Output version information and exit.
AUTHOR
Karel Zak <kzak@redhat.com>.
ENVIRONMENT
LIBBLKID_DEBUG=0xffff
enables debug output.
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 ALSOblkid(8)findfs(8)util-linux October 2009 WIPEFS(8)
