MKFS_UFS(8) Maintenance Commands and Procedures MKFS_UFS(8)

NAME

mkfs_ufs - construct a UFS file system

SYNOPSIS

mkfs -F ufs [generic_options] [-o FSType_specific_options] raw_device_file
[size]

DESCRIPTION

The UFS-specific module of mkfs builds a UFS file system with a root
directory and a lost+found directory (see fsck(8)).


The UFS-specific mkfs is rarely run directly. Use the newfs(8) command
instead.


raw_device_file indicates the disk partition on which to create the new
file system. If the -o N, -V, or -m options are specified, the
raw_device_file is not actually modified. size specifies the number of
disk sectors in the file system, where a disk sector is usually 512
bytes. This argument must follow the raw_device_file argument and is
required (even with -o N), unless the -V or -m generic options are
specified.


generic_options are supported by the generic mkfs command. See mkfs(8)
for a description of these options.

OPTIONS

The following generic options are supported:

-m
Print the command line that was used to create the existing file
system.


-V
Print the current mkfs command line.

OPTIONS

The following UFS-specific options are supported:

-o
Use one or more of the following values separated by commas (with
no intervening spaces) to specify UFS-specific options:

apc=n
The number of alternate sectors per cylinder to
reserve for bad block replacement for SCSI devices
only. The default is 0.

This option is not applicable for disks with EFI
labels and is ignored.


bsize=n
The logical block size of the file system in bytes,
either 4096 or 8192. The default is 8192. The sun4u
architecture does not support the 4096 block size.


calcbinsb
Sends to stdout a binary (machine-readable) version
of the superblock that would be used to create a
file system with the specified configuration
parameters.


calcsb
Sends to stdout a human-readable version of the
superblock that would be used to create a file
system with the specified configuration parameters.


cgsize=n
The number of cylinders per cylinder group, ranging
from 16 to 256. The default is calculated by
dividing the number of sectors in the file system by
the number of sectors in a gigabyte. Then, the
result is multiplied by 32. The default value is
always between 16 and 256.

The per-cylinder-group meta data must fit in a space
no larger than what is available in one logical file
system block. If too large a cgsize is requested, it
is changed by the minimum amount necessary.


fragsize=n
The smallest amount of disk space in bytes that can
be allocated to a file. fragsize must be a power of
2 divisor of bsize, where:

bsize / fragsize is 1, 2, 4, or 8.

This means that if the logical block size is 4096,
legal values for fragsize are 512, 1024, 2048, and
4096. When the logical block size is 8192, legal
values are 1024, 2048, 4096, and 8192. The default
value is 1024.

For file systems greater than 1 terabyte or for file
systems created with the mtb=y option, fragsize is
forced to match block size (bsize).


free=n
The minimum percentage of free space to maintain in
the file system between 0% and 99%, inclusively.
This space is off-limits to users. Once the file
system is filled to this threshold, only the
superuser can continue writing to the file system.

The default is ((64 Mbytes/partition size) * 100),
rounded down to the nearest integer and limited
between 1% and 10%, inclusively.

This parameter can be subsequently changed using the
tunefs(8) command.


gap=n
Rotational delay. This option is obsolete in the
Solaris 10 release. The value is always set to 0,
regardless of the input value.


maxcontig=n
The maximum number of logical blocks, belonging to
one file, that are allocated contiguously. The
default is calculated as follows:

maxcontig = disk drive maximum transfer size / disk block size


If the disk drive's maximum transfer size cannot be
determined, the default value for maxcontig is
calculated from kernel parameters as follows:

If maxphys is less than ufs_maxmaxphys, which is
typically 1 Mbyte, then maxcontig is set to maxphys.
Otherwise, maxcontig is set to ufs_maxmaxphys.

You can set maxcontig to any positive integer value.

The actual value will be the lesser of what has been
specified and what the hardware supports.

You can subsequently change this parameter by using
tunefs(8).


mtb=y
Set the parameters of the file system to allow
eventual growth to over a terabyte in total file
system size. This option sets fragsize to be the
same as bsize, and sets nbpi to 1 Mbyte, unless the
-i option is used to make it even larger. If you
explicitly set the fragsize or nbpi parameters to
values that are incompatible with this option, the
user-supplied value of fragsize or nbpi is ignored.


N
Print out the file system parameters that would be
used to create the file system without actually
creating the file system.


nbpi=n
The number of bytes per inode, which specifies the
density of inodes in the file system. The number is
divided into the total size of the file system to
determine the number of inodes to create.

This value should reflect the expected average size
of files in the file system. If fewer inodes are
desired, a larger number should be used. To create
more inodes, a smaller number should be given. The
default is 2048.

The number of inodes can increase if the file system
is expanded with the growfs command.


nrpos=n
The number of different rotational positions in
which to divide a cylinder group. The default is 8.

This option is not applicable for disks with EFI
labels and is ignored.


nsect=n
The number of sectors per track on the disk. The
default is 32.


ntrack=n
The number of tracks per cylinder on the disk. The
default is 16.

This option is not applicable for disks with EFI
labels and is ignored.


opt=s|t
The file system can either be instructed to try to
minimize the time spent allocating blocks, or to try
to minimize the space fragmentation on the disk. The
default is time.

This parameter can be subsequently changed with the
tunefs(8) command.


rps=n
The rotational speed of the disk, in revolutions per
second. The default is 60.

Note that you specify rps for mkfs and rpm for
newfs.

This option is not applicable for disks with EFI
labels and is ignored.

Alternatively, parameters can be entered as a list of space-
separated values (without keywords) whose meaning is positional. In
this case, the -o option is omitted and the list follows the size
operand. This is the way newfs passes the parameters to mkfs.

OPERANDS

The following operands are supported:

raw_device_file
The disk partition on which to write.

SEE ALSO

ufs(4FS), dir_ufs(5), attributes(7), fsck(8), mkfs(8), newfs(8),
tunefs(8)

DIAGNOSTICS

The following error message typically occurs with very high density
disks. On such disks, the file system structure cannot encode the proper
disk layout information. However, such disks have enough onboard
intelligence to make up for any layout deficiencies, so there is no
actual impact on performance. The warning that performance might be
impaired can be safely ignored.

Warning: insufficient space in super block for
rotational layout tables with nsect sblock.fs_nsect
and ntrak sblock.fs_ntrak. (File system performance may be impaired.)


The following error message occurs when the disk geometry results in a
situation where the last truncated cylinder group cannot contain the
correct number of data blocks. Some disk space is wasted.

Warning: inode blocks/cyl group (grp) >= data blocks (num) in last cylinder


If there is only one cylinder group and if the above condition holds
true, mkfs fails with the following error:

File system creation failed. There is only one cylinder group and that is
not even big enough to hold the inodes.


The following error message occurs when the best calculated file system
layout is unable to include the last few sectors in the last cylinder
group. This is due to the interaction between how much space is used for
various pieces of meta data and the total blocks available in a cylinder
group. Modifying nbpi and cpg might reduce this number, but it is rarely
worth the effort.

Warning: num sector(s) in last cylinder group unallocated

NOTES

You can use lofiadm to create a file that appears to the mkfs command
(for example, mkfs_pcfs or mkfs_ufs) as a raw device. You can then use
the mkfs command to create a file system on that device. See lofiadm(8)
for examples of creating a UFS and a PC (FAT) file system on a device
created by lofiadm.


Both the block and character devices, such as devices in /dev/dsk and
/dev/rdsk, must be available prior to running the mkfs command.

March 8, 2006 MKFS_UFS(8)