Format a volume as XFS in Debian


First of all install xfsprogs:

apt-get install xfsprogs

Make sure your formatting a right drive! Use ls to list drives:

root@debian:~# ls /dev/sd*
 /dev/sda  /dev/sda1  /dev/sda2  /dev/sda5  /dev/sdb  /dev/sdb1  /dev/sdc

In this installation I will format the drive /sdc, I know this because this is a blank drive with no partitions.

Now we partition the drive with the help of fdisk. fdisk can be scary if you have never used it before, in order to partition the drive use the commands below. Note: this will create one big partition, use the values inside the brackets [] as a guide.

root@debian:~# fdisk /dev/sdb

 Command (m for help): [n]
 Partition type:
    p   primary (0 primary, 0 extended, 4 free)
    e   extended
 Select (default p): [p]
 Partition number (1-4, default 1): [1]
 First sector (2048-335544319, default 2048): [press Enter]
 Using default value 2048
 Last sector, +sectors or +size{K,M,G} (2048-335544319, default 335544319): [press Enter]
 Using default value 335544319

 Command (m for help): [w]
 The partition table has been altered!

 Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.
 Syncing disks.

Because we installed xfsprogs we can make use of mkfs.xfs to format the partition we created in the step above. -L will label the drive as media:

root@debian:~# mkfs.xfs -L media /dev/sdc1

Create a mount point:

root@debian:/dev# mkdir /mnt/dat1

Mount the drive:

root@debian:~# mount -t xfs /dev/sdc1 /mnt/dat1

Let’s check the newly mounted volume, visible at the bottom:

root@debian:/dev# df -h

 Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
 /dev/sda1        50G  1.9G   46G   4% /
 udev             80M  4.0K   80M   1% /dev
 tmpfs            36M  272K   35M   1% /run
 none            5.0M     0  5.0M   0% /run/lock
 none             88M     0   88M   0% /run/shm
 /dev/sdc1       160G   33M  160G   1% /mnt/dat1

To permanently mount the new volume every time the system boots you will need to edit and add a new entry to /etc/ fstab. You can use the echo command to easily add the new entry:

root@debian:# echo '/dev/sdc1 /mnt/dat1 xfs defaults 0 0' >> /etc/fstab

Or manually add the entry below to fstab with the text editor of your choice:

/dev/sdc1 /mnt/dat1 xfs defaults 0 0

XFS is a good file system for those of us working with large files. This is a recommended filesystem for those working with MongoDB wiredTiger too.

#linux #filesystem #xfs #fdisk #mount #df #fstab #xfsprogs #mkfs_xfs

In MongoDB it is suggested to turn atime to off. atime is set by Linux on each file accessed by applications. It is reported repeatedly that turning it off will improve disk performance on that partition.

To run off atime you need to set noatime on the partition you are placing mongoDB database files. Open /etc/fstab and look for your desired partition (mine is `/var`):

/dev/mapper/mongo--vg-var /var            xfs     defaults        0       2

Add noatime after defaults:

/dev/mapper/mongo--vg-var /var            xfs     defaults,noatime        0       2

Yours may be a little bit different. Now reboot your server using reboot --reboot.


Now you can check it by mount -l whether noatime is set or not:

/dev/mapper/mongo--vg-var on /var type xfs (rw,noatime,attr2,inode64,logbsize=256k,sunit=512,swidth=1024,noquota)

In the next post we test this using touch command in Linux.

#mongodb #mongo #noatime #atime #xfs #linux #fstab #mount