System Administration Guide: Devices and File Systems
Previous Next

Determining a File System's Type

You can determine a file system's type by using one of the following:

  • The FS type field in the virtual file system table (the /etc/vfstab file)

  • The /etc/default/fs file for local file systems

  • The /etc/dfs/fstypes file for NFS file systems

How to Determine a File System's Type

This procedure works whether or not the file system is mounted.

Determine a file system's type by using the grep command.

$ grep mount-point fs-table
mount-point

Specifies the mount point name of the file system for which you want to know the file system type. For example, the /var directory.

fs-table

Specifies the absolute path to the file system table in which to search for the file system's type. If the file system is mounted, fs-table should be /etc/mnttab. If the file system isn't mounted, fs-table should be /etc/vfstab.

Information for the mount point is displayed.


Note - If you have the raw device name of a disk slice, you can use the fstyp command to determine a file system's type (if the disk slice contains a file system). For more information, see fstyp(1M).


Example 17-1 Determining a File System's Type

The following example uses the /etc/vfstab file to determine the file system type for the /export file system.

$ grep /export /etc/vfstab
/dev/dsk/c0t3d0s6   /dev/rdsk/c0t3d0s6  /export ufs   2       yes    -
$ 

The following example uses the /etc/mnttab file to determine the file system type of the currently mounted diskette. The diskette was previously mounted by vold.

$ grep floppy /etc/mnttab
/dev/diskette0  /media/floppy   ufs     rw,nosuid,intr,largefiles,logging,xattr,onerror=panic,dev=900002 
       1165251037
Previous Next