Finding out hard disk information

[ianw1974]

OK, so in addition to using:

 

fdisk -l /dev/sda

 

to find out partition information, is there some sort of utility so that I can find out what configuration was applied when I used the following commands:

 

mke2fs
mke2fs -j
mkreiserfs

 

the reason I ask is that I don't know what each file system sets the block sizes to by default. I know I can change during the mkxxxxx process, but I just want to be able to find out what they are currently configured as and with what values.

[lavaeolus]

for ext2/3 you can use dumpe2fs, don't know about reiser, but there should be an equivalent command

 

maybe fsck has some options that show these informations ?

[ianw1974]

Cool, that works for my ext2/ext3 partitions. I used debugreiserfs for my reiserfs partition, and that worked a treat!

[ianw1974]

And I think there's dumpxfs for xfs partitions too, will have to check when I get home :D

[lynchmob]

Do you use the actual partition info as an argument?

ie.:

dumpe2fs /dev/sda1

or

debugreiserfs /dev/sda6

Or do you point to the entire device?

lynchmob

[ianw1974]

I've been using how you mention above with the command followed by the device/partition.

 

My gentoo systems has /dev/sda1 which is ext2 or ext3 depending on what I was building, and /dev/sda3 which is reiserfs or xfs depending on my preference.

 

I've both tested the dumpe2fs and debugreiserfs and they work no problem, but I've yet to test what's available for xfs.

[lavaeolus]

you have to point the command to a partition (e. g. /dev/sda1) not the entire disk, since the dump command informs you about the filesystem (version, attributes and the like) not the physical disk, for info about the disk itself you can use hdparm or better smartmontools

[ianw1974]

I know :P

 

But when using fdisk -l I have to use without the numbers :D

[lavaeolus]

sorry, was an answer to lynchmobs question :D

[ianw1974]

I never saw that! I think I was having a bad eye day :P