Filesystems
This page documents the Alpine Linux supported filesystems needed for various storage media.
Overview
The following table lists the packages related to various filesystems available in Alpine Linux along with the command to format.
| Tool | Filesystem | Formatting command | Brief Notes |
| btrfs-progs | Btrfs | mkfs.btrfs | combines copy-on-write and volume management |
| dosfstools | FAT12/FAT16/FAT32 | mkfs.vfat | also used for EFI partition |
| e2fsprogs | ext2/ext3/ext4 | mkfs.ext4 | ext4 is current default in Linux |
| exfatprogs | exfat | mkfs.exfat | Commonly used on USB flash drives and SD cards |
| f2fs-tools | F2FS | mkfs.f2fs | |
| hfsprogs | HFS/HFS+ | mkfs.hfsplus | Apple/Mac products |
| jfsutils | JFS | mkfs.jfs | |
| ntfs-3g-progs | NTFS | mkfs.ntfs | Full-featured, Microsoft/Windows FUSE driver |
| squashfs-tools | SquashFS | mksquashfs | compressed read-only file system |
| xfsprogs | XFS | mkfs.xfs |
Filesystem tools
Different packages/programs are used to format different types of filesystems. The filesystem tools and the formatting commands are listed above.
Filesystem labels
Most of the commonly used filesystems store the volume label or filesystem label in their metadata/superblock.
| Filesystem | Tool | Filesystem creation | Existing filesystem | Mounted/Unmounted |
| Btrfs | btrfs-progs | mkfs.btrfs -L "label" /dev/sdXY | btrfs filesystem label /mount/point "newlabel" | Mounted |
| FAT32 | dosfstools | mkfs.fat -n "LABEL" /dev/sdXY | fatlabel /dev/sdXY "NEWLABEL" | Unmounted |
| ext4 | e2fsprogs-extra | mkfs.ext4 -L "label" /dev/sdXY | tune2fs -L "newlabel" /dev/sdXY | Unmounted |
| NTFS | ntfs-3g-progs | mkfs.ntfs -L "label" /dev/sdXY | ntfslabel /dev/sdXY "newlabel" | Unmounted |
| XFS | xfsprogs | mkfs.xfs -L "label" /dev/sdXY | xfs_admin -L "newlabel" /dev/sdXY | Unmounted |