This manual page is for Mac OS X version 10.6.3

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NEWFS_HFS(8)                             BSD System Manager's Manual                            NEWFS_HFS(8)

NAME
     newfs_hfs -- construct a new HFS Plus file system

SYNOPSIS
     newfs_hfs [-N] [-U uid] [-G gid] [-M mask] [-s] [-b block-size] [-c clump-size-list] [-i first-cnid]
               [-J [journal-size]] [-n node-size-list] [-v volume-name] special
     newfs_hfs -N partition-size [-U uid] [-G gid] [-M mask] [-h | -w] [-s] [-b block-size]
               [-c clump-size-list] [-i first-cnid] [-J [journal-size]] [-n node-size-list] [-v volume-name]

DESCRIPTION
     Newfs_hfs builds an HFS Plus file system on the specified special device.  Before running newfs_hfs the
     disk should be partitioned using the Disk Utility application or pdisk(8).

     The file system default parameters are calculated based on the size of the disk partition. Typically
     the defaults are reasonable, however newfs_hfs has several options to allow the defaults to be selec-tively selectively
     tively overridden.  The options are as follows:

     -N [partition-size]
                 Causes the file system parameters to be printed out without really creating the file sys-tem. system.
                 tem.  If the argument following the -N starts with a decimal digit, it is assumed to be a
                 partition size.  The paritition size may be given in decimal, octal (with leading `0'), or
                 hexadecimal (with leading `0x').  The partition size argument can be specified in 512-byte
                 blocks (with a `b' suffix), petabytes (`p' suffix), terabytes (`t' suffix), gigabytes (`g'
                 suffix), megabytes (`m' suffix), or kilobytes (`k' suffix).  All suffixes indicate binary,
                 not decimal, multipliers (e.g., `1k' is 1024 bytes).  If no suffix is specified, the value
                 is assumed to be in bytes; if an illegal suffix is specified, it results in a size of 0
                 bytes.

                 If the partition size is given, then no special device argument shall be provided.  If no
                 partition size is given, then the size of the given special device is used instead, and the
                 special device will not be written to.

     -U uid      Set the owner of the file system's root directory to uid.

     -G gid      Set the group of the file system's root directory to gid.

     -M mask     Specify the octal access permissions mask for the file system's root directory.

     -s          Creates a case-sensitive HFS Plus filesystem. By default a case-insensitive filesystem is
                 created.  Case-sensitive HFS Plus file systems require a Mac OS X version of 10.3 (Darwin
                 7.0) or later.

     -b block-size
                 The allocation block size of the file system.  The default value is 4096.

     -c clump-size-list
                 This specifies the clump and/or initial sizes, in allocation blocks, for the various meta-data metadata
                 data files.  Clump sizes are specified with the -c option followed by a comma separated
                 list of the form arg=blocks.

                 Example:  -c c=5000,e=500

                 a=blocks    Set the attribute file clump size.

                 b=blocks    Set the allocation bitmap file clump size.

                 c=blocks    Set the catalog file clump size.

                 d=blocks    Set the data fork clump size.

                 e=blocks    Set the extent overflow file clump size.

                 r=blocks    Set the resource fork clump size.

     -i first-cnid
                 This specifies the initial catalog node ID for user files and directories. The default
                 value is 16.

     -J [journal-size]
                 Creates a journaled HFS+ volume.  The default journal size varies, based on the size of the
                 volume.  Appending an 'M' to the journal size implies megabytes (i.e. 64M is 64 megabytes).
                 The maximum journal size is 1024 megabytes.

     -n node-size-list
                 This specifies the b-tree node sizes, in bytes, for the various b-tree files.  Node sizes
                 are specified with the -n option followed by a comma separated list of the form arg=bytes.
                 The node size must be a power of two and no larger than 32768 bytes.

                 Example:  -n c=8192,e=4096

                 a=bytes     Set the attribute b-tree node size.

                 c=bytes     Set the catalog b-tree node size.

                 e=bytes     Set the extent overflow b-tree node size.

     -v volume-name
                 Volume name (file system name) in ascii or UTF-8 format.

SEE ALSO
     mount(8), pdisk(8)

HISTORY
     The newfs_hfs command appeared in Mac OS X Server 1.0 .  As of Mac OS X 10.6, this utility no longer
     generates HFS standard file systems.

Mac OS X                                        June 19, 2008                                       Mac OS X