File System Creation — S3QL 5.2.3 documentation

# File System Creation

A S3QL file system is created with the mkfs.s3ql command. It has the following syntax:

    mkfs.s3ql [options] <storage url>

This command accepts the following options:

> `--cachedir <path>`

>   Store cached data in this directory (default: `~/.s3ql)`

> `--log <target>`

>   Destination for log messages. Specify `none` for standard output or `syslog` for the system logging daemon. Anything else will be interpreted as a file name. Log files will be rotated when they reach 1 MiB, and at most 5 old log files will be kept. Default: `None`

> `--debug-modules <modules>`

>   Activate debugging output from specified modules (use commas to separate multiple modules, ‘all’ for everything). Debug messages will be written to the target specified by the `--log` option.

> `--debug`

>   Activate debugging output from all S3QL modules. Debug messages will be written to the target specified by the `--log` option.

> `--quiet`

>   be really quiet

> `--backend-options <options>`

>   Backend specific options (separate by commas). See backend documentation for available options.

> `--version`

>   just print program version and exit

> `--authfile <path>`

>   Read authentication credentials from this file (default: `~/.s3ql/authinfo2)`

> `-L <name>`

>   Filesystem label

> `--data-block-size <size>`

>   Block size (in KiB) to use for storing file contents. Files larger than this size will be stored in multiple backend objects. Backend object size may be smaller than this due to compression. Default: 1024 KiB.

> `--metadata-block-size <size>`

>   Block size (in KiB) to use for storing filesystem metadata. Backend object size may be smaller than this due to compression. Default: 64 KiB.

> `--plain`

>   Create unencrypted file system.

Unless you have specified the `--plain` option, mkfs.s3ql will ask you to enter an encryption password. This password will not be read from an authentication file specified with the `--authfile` option to prevent accidental creation of an encrypted file system.

Note that:

- All data that is stored under the given storage url is assumed to managed exclusively by S3QL. Trying to manually save additional objects (or remove or manipulate existing objects) will lead to file system corruption, and fsck.s3ql may delete objects that do not belong to the file system.

- With most storage backends, slashes in the storage url prefix do not have special meaning. For example, the storage urls `s3://mybucket/myprefix/` and `s3://mybucket/myprefix` are distinct. In the first case, the prefix is `myprefix/`, while in the second it is `myprefix`.

- S3QL file systems can not be “stacked”, i.e. you cannot have one file system stored at `s3://bucketname/outerprefix` and a second one at `s3://bucketname/outerprefix/innerprefix`.