/proc/filesystems: Find out what filesystems supported by kernel

/proc/filesystems is the file used to detect filesystems supported by running kernel. You can quickly run grep or cat command to display the list of all supported file system. nodev indicates that the file system is not associated with a physical device such as /dev/sdb1. If you see ext3 or vfat, it means you will be able to mount ext3 and vfat based file systems.

Following cat command will quickly tell you what filesystems supported by currently running Linux kernel:

$ cat /proc/filesystems
Output:

nodev   sysfs
nodev   rootfs
nodev   proc
nodev   usbfs
        ext3
        vfat
....

For example, if the iso9660 fllesystem not listed, you can not mount standard CD-ROM file system. To add support simply recompile kernel with iso9660 filesystem support.

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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Arla September 6, 2010 at 5:19 pm

What does “nodev” in the beginning of a line mean?

2 shandr December 8, 2011 at 2:27 pm

It’s not always true. For example you will not see nfs and nfs4 in /proc/filesystems after reboot. But still you can mount remote nfs directory if needed packages are installed in the system. After successful mounting nfs and nfs4 will appear in /proc/filesystem. Tested on Ubuntu 11.10

3 ken December 15, 2011 at 1:25 am: same for vfat.
i can still mount vfat usb drive even vfat not found in /proc/filesystems.But after mounting, it appears in /proc/filesystems too! Tested on kernel 2.4.35.4

4 Ra April 24, 2012 at 8:18 am