This directory of Linux commands is from Linux in a Nutshell, 5th Edition.
Click on any of the 687 commands below to get a description and list of available options. All links in the command summaries point to the online version of the book on Safari Bookshelf.
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mke2fs
mke2fs [options] device [blocks] mkfs.ext2 [options] device [blocks]
System administration command. Format device as a Linux Second Extended Filesystem. You may specify the number of blocks on the device or allow mke2fs to guess.
Options
Specify block size in bytes.
Scan device for bad blocks before execution.
Specify extended features. This option's parameters may be given in a comma-separated list:
stride=size Configure filesystem for a RAID array. Set stride size to size blocks per stripe.
resize=blocks Reserve descriptor table space to grow filesystem to the specified number of blocks.
Specify fragment size in bytes.
Force mke2fs to run even if filesystem is mounted or device is not a block special device. This option is probably best avoided.
Create an inode for each bytes-per-inode of space. bytes-per-inode must be 1024 or greater; it is 4096 by default.
Create an ext3 journal. This is the same as invoking mkfs.ext3.
Use specified parameterlist to create an ext3 journal. The following two parameters may be given in a comma-separated list:
size=journal-size Create a journal of journal-size megabytes. The size may be between 1024 filesystem blocks and 102,400 filesystem blocks in size (e.g., 1-100 megabytes if using 1K blocks, 4-400 megabytes if using 4K blocks).
device=journal-device Use an external journal-device to hold the filesystem journal. The journal-device can be specified by name, by volume label, or by UUID.
Consult filename for a list of bad blocks.
Set volume label for filesystem.
Reserve percentage percent of the blocks for use by privileged users.
Set the last mounted directory for filesystem to directory.
Don't create the filesystem; just show what would happen if it were run. This option is overridden by -F.
Specify number of inodes to reserve for filesystem. By default, this number is calculated from the number of blocks and the inode size.
Set filesystem operating system type to os. The default value is usually Linux.
Use specified featurelist to create filesystem. The sparse_super and filetype features are used by default on kernels 2.2 and later. The following parameters may be given in a comma-separated list:
dir_index Use hashed B-trees to index directories.
filetype Store file type information in directory entries.
has_journal Create an ext3 journal. Same as using the -j option.
journal_dev Prepare an external journaling device by creating an ext3 journal on device instead of formatting it.
sparse_super Save space on a large filesystem by creating fewer superblock backup copies.
Quiet mode.
Set filesystem revision number to revision.
Write only superblock and group descriptors; suppress writing of inode table and block and inode bitmaps. Useful only when attempting to salvage damaged systems.
Set bytes-per-inode based on the intended use of the filesystem. Supported filesystem types are:
news Four kilobytes per inode.
largefile One megabyte per inode.
largefile4 Four megabytes per inode.
Verbose mode.
Print version number, then exit.
