Linux how to determine the file system type
All files accessible in a Linux system are arranged in one big tree, the file hierarchy, rooted at /. These files can be spread out over several devices and they can be remote or local file system. Linux supports numerous file system types. For example it supports Ext2,. Ext3, NFS, FA16, FAT32, NTFS,Sysfs, Procfs etc. To determine the file system type or to find out what type of file systems currently mounted you need to use command called mount or df. Type df command as follows:
$ df -TOutput:
Filesystem Type 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/hdb1 ext3 19228276 14737848 3513680 81% / tmpfs tmpfs 383960 4 383956 1% /dev/shm
df command report filesystem disk space usage and if you pass -T option it will report filesystem type. As you see second command displays file system type (ext3). Type, mount command as follows at shell prompt:
$ mountOutput:
/dev/hdb1 on / type ext3 (rw,errors=remount-ro) /dev/hdb2 on /home type ext3 (rw,errors=remount-ro) proc on /proc type proc (rw) sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw) devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620) tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw) usbfs on /proc/bus/usb type usbfs (rw) automount(pid3558) on /data type autofs (rw,fd=4,pgrp=3558,minproto=2,maxproto=4)
As you can see, second last column displays the file system type. For example first line [/dev/hdb1 on / type ext3 (rw,errors=remount-ro)] can be interpreted as follows:
- /dev/hdb1 : Partition
- / : File system
- ext3 : File system type
- (rw,errors=remount-ro) : Mount options
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August 29th, 2007 at 2:43 pm
What is the best procedure for identifying the file system type of unmounted SCSI disks (salvaged from a dead Alpha [Digital Unix 4] system)?
October 30th, 2007 at 2:35 am
You can try a ‘file -s’ on the device node.