lfs-book/chapter02/creatingfilesystem.xml

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<sect1 id="space-creatingfilesystem">
  <?dbhtml filename="creatingfilesystem.html"?>

  <title>Creating a File System on the Partition</title>

  <para>Now that a blank partition has been set up, the file system can be
  created.  LFS can use any file system recognized by the Linux kernel, but the 
  most common types are ext3 and ext4.  The choice of file system can be 
  complex and depends on the characteristics of the files and the size of 
  the partition.  For example:</para>

  <variablelist>
    <varlistentry>
      <term>ext2</term>
      <listitem><para>is suitable for small partitions that are updated infrequently
      such as /boot.</para>
      </listitem>
    </varlistentry>
    <varlistentry>
      <term>ext3</term>
      <listitem><para>is an upgrade to ext2 that includes a journal
      to help recover the partition's status in the case of an unclean 
      shutdown.  It is commonly used as a general purpose file system.
      </para>
      </listitem>
    </varlistentry>
    <varlistentry>
      <term>ext4</term>
      <listitem><para>is the latest version of the ext file system family of
      partition types.  It provides several new capabilties including
      nano-second timestamps, creation and use of very large files (16 TB), and
      speed improvements.</para>
      </listitem>
    </varlistentry>
  </variablelist>

  <para>Other file sytems, including FAT32, NTFS, ReiserFS, JFS, and XFS are
  useful for specialized purposes.  More information about these file systems
  can be found at <ulink
  url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_systems"/>.</para>

  <para>LFS assumes that the root file system (/) is of type ext4.  To create
  an <systemitem class="filesystem">ext4</systemitem> file system on the LFS
  partition, run the following:</para>

<screen role="nodump"><userinput>mkfs -v -t ext4 /dev/<replaceable>&lt;xxx&gt;</replaceable></userinput></screen>

<!--
  <para>Replace <replaceable>&lt;xxx&gt;</replaceable> with the name of the LFS
  partition (<filename class="devicefile">sda5</filename> in our previous
  example).</para>

  <note>
    <para>Some host distributions use custom features in their filesystem
    creation tools (E2fsprogs). This can cause problems when booting into your new
    LFS in Chapter 9, as those features will not be supported by the LFS-installed
    E2fsprogs; you will get an error similar to <quote>unsupported filesystem
    features, upgrade your e2fsprogs</quote>. To check if your host system
    uses custom enhancements, run the following command:</para>

<screen role="nodump"><userinput>debugfs -R feature /dev/<replaceable>&lt;xxx&gt;</replaceable></userinput></screen>

    <para>If the output contains features other than
    <option>has_journal</option>, <option>ext_attr</option>,
    <option>resize_inode</option>, <option>dir_index</option>,
    <option>filetype</option>, <option>sparse_super</option>,
    <option>large_file</option> or <option>needs_recovery</option>, then your
    host system may have custom enhancements.  In that case, to avoid later
    problems, you should compile the stock E2fsprogs package and use the
    resulting binaries to re-create the filesystem on your LFS partition:</para>

<screen role="nodump"><userinput>cd /tmp
tar -xzvf /path/to/sources/e2fsprogs-&e2fsprogs-version;.tar.gz
cd e2fsprogs-&e2fsprogs-version;
mkdir -v build
cd build
../configure
make #note that we intentionally don't 'make install' here!
./misc/mke2fs -jv /dev/<replaceable>&lt;xxx&gt;</replaceable>
cd /tmp
rm -rfv e2fsprogs-&e2fsprogs-version;</userinput></screen>
  </note>
-->
  <para>If you are using an existing <systemitem class="filesystem">swap
  </systemitem> partition, there is no need to format it. If a new
  <systemitem class="filesystem"> swap</systemitem> partition was created,
  it will need to be initialized with this command:</para>

<screen role="nodump"><userinput>mkswap /dev/<replaceable>&lt;yyy&gt;</replaceable></userinput></screen>

  <para>Replace <replaceable>&lt;yyy&gt;</replaceable> with the name of the
  <systemitem class="filesystem">swap</systemitem> partition.</para>

</sect1>