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Working with XFS filesystems

Information on XFS filesystems is available in the XFS FAQ and the XFS man pages. The following pages provide additional information:

For a listing of the capabilities and specifications of XFS, see XFS for Linux Features

For information on using the Data Management API (DMAPI) within the XFS filesystem, see The Data Management API.

For information on the differences in the implementation of Linux XFS and IRIX XFS, see Linux XFS and IRIX XFS

General XFS administration instructions are provided below.

Partitioning

You will need a partition to create your new XFS filesystem on. This partition could be from a new disk, unpartitioned space on an existing disk, or you could overwrite an existing partition. In general, use the fdisk command to create or set the partition to "Linux Native (83)", and follow the instructions below to make an XFS filesystem on that partition. See the Linux Partition HOWTO for more information if necessary.

Creating an XFS filesystem

You can create a new XFS filesystem in the same manner as you would any other Linux filesystem, with the command:

	mkfs -t xfs /dev/<devfile>

where /dev/<devfile> is the partition where you wish to create the filesystem (note that this will destroy any filesystem currently on that partition).

For example, to create a filesystem on the 3rd partition of your 2nd SCSI drive, you would use the command:

       mkfs -t xfs /dev/sdb3

One important option that you may need is "-f" which will force the creation of a new filesystem, if a filesystem already exists on that partition. Again, note that this will destroy all data currently on that partition:

       mkfs -t xfs -f /dev/<devfile>

You may achieve better performance by increasing the logfile size. The following command creates a filesystem with a default logfile size of 8000 blocks:

       mkfs -t xfs -l internal,size=8000b -d name=/dev/<devfile>

Other options are available for XFS filesystem creation; see the man pages for more information.

Mounting an XFS filesystem

You can then mount the new filesystem with the command:

	mount -t xfs /dev/<devfile> /<mount_pt>

where /dev/<devfile> is the device containing the filesystem, and /<mount_pt> is the mount point for the filesystem.

Since XFS is a journaling filesystem, before it mounts the filesystem, it will check the transaction log for any unfinished transactions, and bring the filesystem up to date. Welcome to a fsck-free world!
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