Creating Oracle Solaris File Systems

This section provides an overview of creating Oracle Solaris file systems.

Creating ZFS File Systems

A ZFS file system is not directly tied to a specific disk partition. A ZFS file system is contained with a ZFS storage pool that can contain many devices. Either whole disks or disk slices can be added to a ZFS storage pool. Within a pool, you will probably want to create additional file systems. File systems provide points of administration that allow you to manage different sets of data within the same pool.

A ZFS file system is created by using the zfs create command. A ZFS file system is automatically mounted when it is created. For more information, see How to Create an ZFS File System.

For more information about creating ZFS storage pools and file systems, see Oracle Solaris ZFS Administration Guide.

Creating UFS File Systems

Before you can create a UFS file system on a disk, the disk must be formatted and divided into slices. A disk slice is a physical subset of a disk that is composed of a single range of contiguous blocks. A slice can be used either as a raw device that provides, for example, swap space, or to hold a disk-based file system. See Chapter 10, Managing Disks (Overview) for complete information on formatting disks and dividing disks into slices.

A UFS file system is created by using the newfs or mkfs command. You must mount a UFS file system after it is created.

For more information, see How to Create and Mount a UFS File System.

Disk and storage management products, such as Solaris Volume Manager, create more sophisticated volumes. Volumes expand beyond single-slice or single-disk boundaries. For more information about using volumes, see Solaris Volume Manager Administration Guide.

You need to create UFS file systems only occasionally, because the Oracle Solaris OS automatically creates them as part of the installation process. You need to create (or re-create) a UFS file system when you want to do the following:

• Add or replace disks

• Change the existing partitioning structure of a disk

• Fully restore of a file system

The newfs command is the standard way to create UFS file systems. The newfs command is a convenient front end to the mkfs command, which actually creates the new file system. The newfs command reads parameter defaults, such as tracks per cylinder and sectors per track, from the label for the disk that will contain the new file system. The options you choose are passed to the mkfs command to build the file system.

For information about the default parameters that are used by the newfs command, see newfs(1M).

Creating a Temporary File System

A temporary file system (TMPFS) uses local memory for file system reads and writes, which is typically much faster than reads and writes in a UFS file system. TMPFS file systems can improve system performance by saving the cost of reading and writing temporary files to a local disk or across the network. Files in TMPFS file systems do not survive across reboots or unmounts.

If you create multiple TMPFS file systems, be aware that they all use the same system resources. Files created under one TMPFS file system use up space available for any other TMPFS file system, unless you limit TMPFS sizes by using the -o size option of the mount command.

For more information about creating and mounting a TMPFS file system, see How to Create and Mount a TMPFS File System.

For general information, see the tmpfs(7FS).

Creating a LOFS File System

An LOFS file system is a virtual file system that provides an alternate path to an existing file system. When other file systems are mounted onto an LOFS file system, the original file system does not change.

For more information about creating and mounting a LOFS file system, see How to Create and Mount an LOFS File System.

For general information, see the lofs(7FS).