which fs on a partition?

[C M Reinehr]

On Friday 13 July 2007 10:39, Jorge Almeida wrote:
> On Fri, 13 Jul 2007, C M Reinehr wrote:
> > On Friday 13 July 2007 02:49, Jorge Almeida wrote:
> >> Anyone knows any tool that would guess which fs (if any) was installed
> >> on a unmounted partition? The purpose is to make sure that the partition
> >> doesn't hold any forgotten data before nuking it.
> >
> > Try `file -s /dev/hda9` or whatever partition it is that you're testing.
>
> $ file -s /dev/hda9
> /dev/hda9: data
>
> Would this output mean something?

I think it just means that file was unable to determine anything, except that 
it is binary(non-ascii), which could mean that there is no usable file system 
or just not one that file recognized.

Another possibility is to use cfdisk to read the partition table. This won't 
tell you for sure about the file system, but the partition type might give 
you a clue.

Cheers!

cmr
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Debian 'Etch' - Registered Linux User #241964
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