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HFORMAT(1)             DragonFly General Commands Manual            HFORMAT(1)


NAME

       hformat - create a new HFS filesystem and make it current


SYNOPSIS

       hformat [-f] [-l label] destination-path [partition-no]


DESCRIPTION

       hformat is used to write a new HFS filesystem to a volume. A UNIX
       pathname to the volume's destination must be specified. The destination
       may be either a block device or a regular file, but it must already
       exist and be writable.

       An optional label can be specified to name the volume. The name must be
       between 1-27 characters and cannot contain a colon (:). By default, the
       volume will be named Untitled.

       If the destination medium is partitioned, one partition must be
       selected to receive the filesystem. If there is only one HFS partition
       on the medium, it will be selected by default. Otherwise, the desired
       partition number must be specified (as the ordinal nth HFS partition)
       on the command-line. The size of the partition determines the size of
       the resulting volume.

       Partition number 0 can be specified to format the entire medium as a
       single filesystem without a partition map, erasing any existing
       partition information. Since this will destroy all the partitions, the
       -f option must be specified to force this operation if the medium
       currently contains a partition map.

       If the medium is not partitioned (or if partition 0 is specified), the
       size or capacity of the medium determines the size of the resulting
       volume.

       The new volume will be empty and will become "current" so subsequent
       commands will refer to it. The current working directory for the volume
       is set to the root of the volume.


EXAMPLES

       % hformat /dev/fd0
              If a floppy disk is available as /dev/fd0, this formats the disk
              as an HFS volume named Untitled.  (N.B. The floppy must already
              have received a low-level format by other means.)

       % dd if=/dev/zero of=disk.hfs bs=1k count=800
       % hformat -l "Test Disk" disk.hfs
              This sequence creates an 800K HFS volume image in the file
              disk.hfs in the current directory, and names it Test Disk.

       % hformat -l "Loma Prieta" /dev/sd2 1
              If a SCSI disk is available as /dev/sd2, this initializes the
              first HFS partition on the disk (which must already exist) with
              a new filesystem, naming the resulting volume Loma Prieta.

       % hformat -f /dev/sd2 0
              This causes the medium accessible as /dev/sd2 to be reformatted
              as a single HFS volume, ignoring and erasing any existing
              partition information on the medium. The -f option must be
              specified if the medium is currently partitioned; otherwise the
              command will fail.


NOTES

       This command does not create or alter partition maps, although it can
       erase them (as described above). Any partition number specified on the
       command line must already exist.

       The smallest volume size which can be formatted with hformat is 800K.


SEE ALSO

       hfsutils(1), hmount(1)


FILES

       $HOME/.hcwd


AUTHOR

       Robert Leslie <rob@mars.org>

HFSUTILS                          08-Nov-1997                       HFORMAT(1)

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