Filesystem formatting in C

[LisaDearheart]

Hi,

I'd like to know if it's possible in my program (C/C++) to create a filesystem on a partition, maybe with advanced options too. I don't want to call the shell and execute the usual commands to do that, so I wonder if there are some native Linux syscalls or external libraries to do that.

Thanks in advance,
Lisa

[Rubberman]

And you want to reinvent the wheel why?

[LisaDearheart]

Why I'm reinventing the wheel?

However, I don't like executing shell commands from my programs, if there's an alternative. Maybe those commands (like mke2fs for example) are using some syscalls or libraries I can have access too from my program; I couldn't find anything on Google about it, but you never know your luck ^^

Lisa

[Cabhan]

"Reinventing the wheel" refers to doing work that someone else has already done.

There is pretty much no reason to avoid using external programs, since they implement a lot of functionality. There is no system call to format a filesystem; this is what those external programs are for.

If your real problem is going through the shell, you can certainly use fork/exec to execute the program directly. However, you should be using mke2fs to accomplish this.

[Kloschüssel]

For debian derivates this should get you the sources:

$ apt-get source util-linux

However, I agree my pre-posters unless you're doing this to learn how things work. Otherwise doing things on your own most probably would cause just problems.

[JHenson]

I am certain you can download the gparted source: sourceforge.net/projects/gparted/files/gparted/

Download it and see how they do it. While I agree with the previous commenters,-- after all this is unix programming and one of the central principles is to never write a piece of code that has already been written well-- sometimes you need to tweek their functionality to do something completely different.

P.S. I am sure you know this, but such an application will need to be run as root.

[LisaDearheart]

Thanks to everyone for the advices. I'll see how to use existent filesystem management programs in an efficient way

Lisa