BSD Unix® Toolbox: 1000+ Commands for FreeBSD®, OpenBSD, and NetBSD®

Chapter 7. Administering File Systems

IN THIS CHAPTER

Understanding file system types

Partitioning disks with sysinstall, fdisk, and bsdlabel

Working with Linux file systems

Using swap with swapon, swapoff, and swapinfo

Mounting file systems

Unmounting file systems

Checking the systems

Checking disk space with du and df

File systems provide the structures in which files, directories, devices, and other elements of the system are accessed from your BSD system. FreeBSD primarily uses the UNIX File System (UFS), although it also supports many different types of file systems (ext3, msdos, cd9660, ntfs, and so on) to some extent. FreeBSD can also work with file systems on many different types of media (hard disks, CDs, USB flash drives, ZIP drives, and so on).

Creating and managing disk slices, partitions, and the file systems on partitions are among the most critical jobs in administering a BSD system. That's because if you mess up your file system, you might very well lose the critical data stored on your computer's hard disk or removable media.

This chapter contains commands for partitioning storage media, creating file systems, mounting and unmounting file systems, and checking file systems for errors and disk space.

Understanding File System Basics

Even though there are a lot of different file system types available for FreeBSD systems, there are not many that you need to set up a basic BSD system. If you are coming from a Linux or other UNIX system background, however, you should start by understanding ...