<sect1 id="ch03-creatingfs">
<title>Creating a file system on the new partition</title>
<?dbhtml filename="creatingfs.html" dir="chapter03"?>

<para>Now the partition has been made, we can create a file system on it.
Most widely used in the Linux world is the second extended file system (ext2),
but with the high-capacity hard disks of today the so-called journaling file
systems are becoming increasingly popular. Here we will create an ext2 file
system, but build instructions for other file systems can be found at <ulink
url="http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/view/cvs/postlfs/filesystems.html"/>.</para>

<para>To create an ext2 file system on the LFS partition run the following:</para>

<para><screen><userinput>mke2fs /dev/xxx</userinput></screen></para>

<para>Replace <filename>xxx</filename> with the name of the LFS partition
(something like <filename>hda5</filename>).</para>

<para>If you created a (new) swap partition you need to initialize it as a
swap partition too (also known as formatting, like you did above with
<userinput>mke2fs</userinput>) by running:</para>

<para><screen><userinput>mkswap /dev/yyy</userinput></screen></para>

<para>Replace <filename>yyy</filename> with the name of the swap
partition.</para>

</sect1>