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Hi, On Sunday 13 March 2005 08:51, Greg Freemyer wrote:
On Sun, 13 Mar 2005 08:16:03 -0800, Randall R Schulz wrote:
Hi,
I just acquired a 1GB Lexar JumpDrive Sport and it came pre-formatted with a FAT-16 file system (gack!):
% file -s /dev/sdc1 /dev/sdc1: x86 boot sector, code offset 0x3c, OEM-ID "MSWIN4.1", sectors/cluster 32, root entries 512, Media descriptor 0xf8, sectors/FAT 248, hiddensectors 32, sectors 2030560 (volumes > 32 MB) , serial number 0x0, unlabeled, FAT (16 bit)
How might I go about putting a more rational file system on that device, given them my system accesses it via the whole subfs / automount business (which I really don't understand at all).
I have not had any luck coming up with a fruitful Google search on this topic.
A related question is what would be a good choice of file system for such a device? I use XFS on my hard drives, but my intuition says that this isn't necessarily the best choice for a device that I'll use to shuttle files between home and work.
Thanks in advance for any information and suggestions anyone can offer.
Randall Schulz
I would think you can just unmount it, then re-format it.
That's the whole problem. This is an automounted device. When no process is accessing it (current directory, open file, etc.), the system unmounts it and /dev/sdc1 no longer accesses that device. Or does it. Hmmm... I was under the impression that was true, but I just tried to confirm it and I find that, in fact, /dev/sdc1 apparently does persistently refer to that device. The "file -s /dev/sdc1" command shows the same results even when mount and df don't list the usb-... file system mounted in /media. So I guess that's all I really need to know.
If you need windows compatibility, I would stick with FAT, but maybe FAT32.
No. I probably don't care about Windows. But if I know how to do this, I can always reformat with FAT32 if that need arises. Since I wouldn't use this for long-term storage, only for file shuttling, frequent reformatting is not a problem.
umount /dev/sda1 mkdosfs -F 32 /dev/sda1 mount /dev/sda1 /mnt # Just as a quick test
If all you need is Linux support, I guess ext2 would be the best choice. Journaling would not make since, at least not with SUSE 9.2 because it mounts with the SYNC option that defeats the whole purpose of a jorunal.
As I said, the mounting and unmounting are handled by the system (some function of subfs, automount and possibly SuSEPlugger, too--as I said, I don't really understand this stuff at all). Thanks to you, Greg, as well as Ken and Martin Deppe (who replied privately) for putting me on to the solution that was right in front of me. Randall Schulz