Odd problem with terminal

[Hakan Koseoglu]

On 6 September 2010 06:14, d-_-b <theunknownandrew at gmail.com> wrote:
> Karl, I am curious to know what was the command you executed to
> reformat the USB with ext4?
> If its not a bother could you tell me?
I'm not sure about Karl but here's the command line way of doing it here:

sudo fdisk -l (note down the partitions and disks if you're not
familiar with it, say it is /dev/sdb, single partition at sdb1, and if
it is not type 83 do the next steps regarding fdisk, otherwise skip to
the mkfs.ext4.
sudo umount /dev/sdb1 (unmount the file system if in use).
sudo fdisk /dev/sdb1
t (enter)
83 (enter)
w (enter)
mkfs.ext4 -L "Some disk" -cc -m 0 /dev/sdb1

parameters:
-L label to have on disk, max 16 bytes.
-cc bad block check
-m root-reserved space percentage (don't need any on this storage),
default is 5% to let the system function during a disk full situation,
i.e., the root can still log in, the log files can still generate
output and write to the disk. For external storage this would just
waste space.

The reserved space etc. can be tuned later on so it's no big deal if
the default values are used, here's a sample:

root at photon:~# tune2fs -m 0 /dev/sdb1
tune2fs 1.41.11 (14-Mar-2010)
Setting reserved blocks percentage to 0% (0 blocks)

-- 
Hakan (m1fcj) - http://www.hititgunesi.org