On Sat, 16 Oct 2004 13:34:52 -0400, Chad Perrin <perrin@apotheon.com> wrote:
> Levi Bard wrote:
> > On Sat, 16 Oct 2004 11:12:14 -0400 (EDT), Eben King
> > <eben1@tampabay.rr.com> wrote:
> >
> >>OK, how does one identify the filesystem on a device? "file" says:
> >>
> >>[root@pc root]# file - < /dev/sda
> >>standard input: x86 boot sector
> >>
> >>(/dev/sda is one of these, 0.5 GB: http://kasercorp.com/usbjumbo.cfm )
> >>
> >>I successfully mounted it as ext2, but just because I happened to *know*
> >>that was what it was. In general, what should I do? How about an offset
> >>that'll skip ahead straight to the filesystem?
> >>
> >> offset in 1K blocks --vvv
> >>dd if=/dev/sda bs=1024 skip=xxx | file -
> >
> >
> > I never found a good solution to this other than trial && error.
>
> I don't recall, but . . . is it possible to mount a drive or partition
> without knowing the filesystem type, even if it's not in fstab? If so,
> you should be able to mount it and use the mount command to find out.
> I'm pretty sure I've mounted something that wasn't in fstab without
> knowing the filesystem type, though I could be misremembering.
>
> In any case, some of the information spat out by running fsck on an
> unmounted filesystem might tell you what filesystem type it is. For
> instance, I ran fsck on a drive I thought was formatted ext3 and it
> informed me that fsck.reiserfs had been run on it, thus informing me
> that my guess at the filesystem type had been wrong. This also has the
> useful effect of telling you if the filesystem is damaged, in addition
> to telling you what type it is.
>
If I remember correctly you can moutn with auto as the filesystem. I
want to say there is a way to check after that however I cant remember
now. If I get a chance I will try something out to see if it shows.
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