Re: mkfs vs mke2fs

From: Shawn Bayern (shawn.bayern@yale.edu)
Date: Mon Aug 16 1999 - 15:30:27 EDT


On Mon, 16 Aug 1999, Ron Nath wrote:

> I guess after reading the man pages Im still not clear on the difference
> between mkfs and mke2fs and when each should be used.

There isn't one, at least not in this case. As the man page for mkfs
describes,

     In actuality, mkfs is simply a front-end for the various
     file system builders (mkfs.fstype) available under Linux.

mkfs.ext2, which builds an ext2 filesystem, is identical to mke2fs; in
RedHat's distribution (at least), they're links to the same file. So when
you run

        mkfs -t ext2

you're just running mke2fs. You could, of course, choose to use a
different type of filesystem, but you probably don't want to.

As for your other question, you *can* (and should) refer to the logical
partitions' devices directly when constructing their filesystems. Don't
confuse "second extended filesystem (ext2)" with "extended partition"; the
former is just a filesystem type (like FAT or NTFS).

Shawn



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