Method to test if disks in system are formatted

linux filesystems hard-disk disk

7,994

Solution 1

Depending on how you access the drives, you could use blkid -o list (deprecated) on them and then parse the output.
The command outputs, among other things, a fs_type label column, that shows the filesystem.

blkid -o list has been superseded be lsblk -f.

Solution 2

The logic I would use may appear to be a little convoluted, but I think it should catch the failure mode.

Basically the steps are

mke2fs
mount the filesystem
Create a file called "format.complete" in the filesystem
unmount the filesystem

So we need to put some tests before this. The logic would be:

Attempt to mount the filesystem at $tmpmount forcing ext2
If mount returned error code ==> Goto NOT FORMATTED
If $tmpmount/lost+found does not exist then an odd filesystem mounted; should not happen but... umount. Goto NOT FORMATTED
If $tmpmount/format.complete does not exist then format was interrupted; umount. Goto NOT FORMATTED
umount ==> FORMATTED, skip to next disk.

The "NOT FORMATTED" would be the original 4 steps.

We can add those structures together. The result would be that disks would only be formatted if they don't have a format.complete file on them.

Once all disks have been formatted you can optionally then remount each one and delete the format.complete file.

Essentially we maintain a small amount of state on each disk and use that to determine if formatting was successful.

7,994

Jim

I'm a Linux guy. That is all. #SOreadytohelp

Updated on September 18, 2022

Comments

Jim almost 2 years

Currently working on a project where I'm dealing with an arbitrary group of disks in multiple systems. I've written a suite of software to burn-in these disks. Part of that process was to format the disks. While testing my software, I realized that if at some point during formatting the disks, the process stops/dies, and I want to restart the process, I really don't want to reformat all of the disks in the set, which have already successfully formatted.

I'm running this software from a ramfs with no disks mounted and none of the disks I am working on ever get mounted and they not be used by my software for anything other than testing, so anything goes on these bad boys. There's no data about which to be concerned.

EDIT:

No, I'm not partitioning.

Yes, ext2 fs.

This is the command I'm using to format:

(/sbin/mke2fs -q -O sparse_super,large_file -m 0 -T largefile -T xfs -FF $drive >> /tmp/mke2fs_drive.log 2>&1 & echo $? > $status_file &)

SOLUTION:

Thanks to Jan's suggestion below:

# lsblk -f /dev/<drv> I concocted the following shell function, which works as expected.

SOURCE

is_formatted()
{
  drive=$1
  fs_type=$2

  if [[ ! -z $drive ]]
  then
    if [[ ! -z $fs_type ]]
    then
      current_fs=$(lsblk -no KNAME,FSTYPE $drive)

      if [[ $(echo $current_fs | wc -w) == 1 ]]
      then
        echo "[INFO] '$drive' is not formatted. Formatting."
        return 0
      else
        current_fs=$(echo $current_fs | awk '{print $2}')

        if [[ $current_fs == $fs_type ]]
        then
          echo "[INFO] '$drive' is formatted with correct fs type. Moving on."
          return 1
        else
          echo "[WARN] '$drive' is formatted, but with wrong fs type '$current_fs'. Formatting."
          return 0
        fi
      fi
    else
      echo "[WARN] is_formatted() was called without specifying fs_type. Formatting."
      return 0
    fi
  else
    echo "[FATAL] is_formatted() was called without specifying a drive. Quitting."
    return -1
  fi
}

DATA

sdca  ext2             46b669fa-0c78-4b37-8fc5-a26368924b8c
sdce  ext2             1a375f80-a08c-4889-b759-363841b615b1
sdck  ext2             f4f43e8c-a5c6-495f-a731-2fcd6eb6683f
sdcn
sdby  ext2             cf276cce-56b1-4027-a795-62ef62d761fa
sdcd  ext2             42fdccb8-e9bc-441e-a43a-0b0f8d409c71
sdci  ext2             d6e7dc60-286d-41e2-9e1b-a64d42072253
sdbw  ext2             c3986491-b83f-4001-a3bd-439feb769d6a
sdch  ext2             3e7dba24-e3ec-471a-9fae-3fee91f988bd
sdcq
sdcf  ext2             8fd2a6fd-d1ae-449b-ad48-b2f9df997e5f
sdcs
sdco
sdcw  ext2             27bf220e-6cb3-4953-bee4-aff27c491721
sdcp  ext2             133d9474-e696-49a7-9deb-78d79c246844
sdcx
sdct
sdcu
sdcy
sdcr
sdcv
sdde
sddc  ext2             0b22bcf1-97ea-4d97-9ab5-c14a33c71e5c
sddi  ext2             3d95fbcb-c669-4eda-8b57-387518ca0b81
sddj
sddb
sdda  ext2             204bd088-7c48-4d61-8297-256e94feb264
sdcz
sddk  ext2             ed5c8bd8-5168-487f-8fee-4b7c671ef2cb
sddl
sddn
sdds  ext2             647d2dea-f71d-4e87-bbe5-30f6424b36c9
sddf  ext2             47128162-bcb7-4eab-802d-221e8eb36074
sddo
sddh  ext2             b7f41e1a-216d-4580-97e6-f2df917754a8
sddg  ext2             39b838e0-f0ae-447c-8876-2d36f9099568

Which yielded:

[INFO] '/dev/sdca' is formatted with correct fs type. Moving on.
[INFO] '/dev/sdce' is formatted with correct fs type. Moving on.
[INFO] '/dev/sdck' is formatted with correct fs type. Moving on.
[INFO] '/dev/sdcn' is not formatted. Formatting.
[INFO] '/dev/sdby' is formatted with correct fs type. Moving on.
[INFO] '/dev/sdcd' is formatted with correct fs type. Moving on.
[INFO] '/dev/sdci' is formatted with correct fs type. Moving on.
[INFO] '/dev/sdbw' is formatted with correct fs type. Moving on.
[INFO] '/dev/sdch' is formatted with correct fs type. Moving on.
[INFO] '/dev/sdcq' is not formatted. Formatting.
[INFO] '/dev/sdcf' is formatted with correct fs type. Moving on.
[INFO] '/dev/sdcs' is not formatted. Formatting.
[INFO] '/dev/sdco' is not formatted. Formatting.
[INFO] '/dev/sdcw' is formatted with correct fs type. Moving on.
[INFO] '/dev/sdcp' is formatted with correct fs type. Moving on.
[INFO] '/dev/sdcx' is not formatted. Formatting.
[INFO] '/dev/sdct' is not formatted. Formatting.
[INFO] '/dev/sdcu' is not formatted. Formatting.
[INFO] '/dev/sdcy' is not formatted. Formatting.
[INFO] '/dev/sdcr' is not formatted. Formatting.
[INFO] '/dev/sdcv' is not formatted. Formatting.
[INFO] '/dev/sdde' is not formatted. Formatting.
[INFO] '/dev/sddc' is formatted with correct fs type. Moving on.
[INFO] '/dev/sddi' is formatted with correct fs type. Moving on.
[INFO] '/dev/sddj' is not formatted. Formatting.
[INFO] '/dev/sddb' is not formatted. Formatting.
[INFO] '/dev/sdda' is formatted with correct fs type. Moving on.
[INFO] '/dev/sdcz' is not formatted. Formatting.
[INFO] '/dev/sddk' is formatted with correct fs type. Moving on.
[INFO] '/dev/sddl' is not formatted. Formatting.
[INFO] '/dev/sddn' is not formatted. Formatting.
[INFO] '/dev/sdds' is formatted with correct fs type. Moving on.
[INFO] '/dev/sddf' is formatted with correct fs type. Moving on.
[INFO] '/dev/sddo' is not formatted. Formatting.
[INFO] '/dev/sddh' is formatted with correct fs type. Moving on.
[INFO] '/dev/sddg' is formatted with correct fs type. Moving on.

Do note that the magic potion was extending Jan's suggestion to simply output what I cared about: lsblk -no KNAME,FSTYPE $drive

Admin almost 8 years

Are you partitioning these disks or formatting the whole disk?
Admin almost 8 years

Are you always formatting with the same FS?
Admin almost 8 years

Wouldn't it make more sense to keep track of your job progress and simply restart after the last successful operation? Note that I seriously wonder what type of error would be so minor that you'd want to continue where you left off considering that a formatting error of your RAM disks would indicate a serious misconfiguration for your project or a hardware error.
Admin almost 8 years

lsblk /dev/sdd1 -no fstype will return the file system (if any) for e.g. sdd1 - it's then just a matter of doing a string comparison...
Admin almost 8 years

@JuliePelletier it would be if the use-case was that simple. In this use case, it's very possible, though unlikely, that the machine be rebooted before the completion of the script. Since the OS is in ram, there is no state kept between boots. I needed to take this possibility into consideration.
Admin almost 8 years

Doesn't your RAM FS get formatted in a matter of seconds? How many days will you use to save a few minutes?
Admin almost 8 years

The RAM FS is not getting formatted at all. Nevertheless, I don't expect to be able to go through the entire process we use for our use-case. This was a requirement. Thank you for your assistance.

Jim almost 8 years

Yeah, I was just thinking about this same method. Though I was looking for a specific command, this is probably the way I'm going to have to solve the problem.