Formatting a Partition

In BasicLinux, use the following command to place a Linux file system a partition /dev/hda3 and determine if the partition has any bad sectors.

mke2fs -t /dev/hda3

In Debian Linux 2.2 and 3.1 the equivalent command would be

mkfs -t ext2 /dev/hda3

The BasicLinux command mke2fs automatically makes a Linux file system while it is necessary to tell mkfs in Debian that we want a Linux (i.e., ext2) file system.

In BasicLinux you can make and mount a second 4 meg ramdisk (again, solely in the computer’s memory) using the commands

mke2fs /dev/ram2 4096

mount /dev/ram2 /mnt

This will give you practice without damaging the file systems on the computer’s

actual hard disk(s).