[TriLUG] mkfs vs mke2fs

davis davis at skink.net
Fri May 14 09:44:38 EDT 2004


On Fri, May 14, 2004 at 09:24:38AM -0400, Ryan Leathers wrote:
> Can someone explain to me the practical differences between mkfs and
> mke2fs?
> 

Hello Ryan,

I believe they are the same thing for ext2/3.  They are named differently 
for ease of use.  In the past, I have seen one be a link
to another.  However, on my current debian unstable sparc box, 
I have three exact copies (not links) of the same program.

ie.:

-rwxr-xr-x    3 root     root        30392 Apr 12 19:10 /sbin/mke2fs*
-rwxr-xr-x    3 root     root        30392 Apr 12 19:10 /sbin/mkfs.ext2*
-rwxr-xr-x    3 root     root        30392 Apr 12 19:10 /sbin/mkfs.ext3*

On my debian sparc powerpc unstable box, I use more filesystems so they
differ for minix and cramfs.

-rwxr-xr-x    3 root     root        34532 Feb 24 10:33 /sbin/mke2fs*
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root         5700 Dec 10 03:29 /sbin/mkfs*
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root        21556 Dec 10 03:29 /sbin/mkfs.cramfs*
-rwxr-xr-x    3 root     root        34532 Feb 24 10:33 /sbin/mkfs.ext2*
-rwxr-xr-x    3 root     root        34532 Feb 24 10:33 /sbin/mkfs.ext3*
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root        16636 Dec 10 03:29 /sbin/mkfs.minix*
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root        11564 Dec 10 03:29 /sbin/mkswap*


-- 
Happy Trails	

John F. Davis                                            Durham, North Carolina
Airhead BMW Club #6334 1992 R100GSPD                     http://www.skink.net



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