Formatting your File Systems

$Id: filesystems.html,v 1.1 2003/09/11 16:50:04 mhw Exp $

This is a brief summary of the kinds of options you might want to use when formatting disk partitions for particular types of use.

1. Linux EXT2 File System

You'll almost certainly want to use EXT3 instead of EXT2 to take advantage of its journaling options. So you need to add the -j option to your mke2fs command line.

1.1. The /boot Partition

Low inodes-per-block as it mostly contains kernel images and initial RAM disks. Add -i 65536 to get one inode per 64kb of disk space.
No need for reserved blocks as only root can write to the partition anyway. Add -m 0.

Hence a suitable command would be

mke2fs -j -i 65536 -m 0 device

1.2. Oracle Database Partitions

Very low inodes-per-block as Oracle uses a small number of large files to manage storage. Add -T largefile4 to get one inode per 4Mb of disk space.
No need for reserved blocks as root won't need to write to the partition, and you don't want to prevent Oracle using the space. Add -m 0.

Hence a suitable command would be

mke2fs -j -T largefile4 -m 0 device