[PLUG] creating a root filesytem in a sparse file

[Carla Schroder]

I'm trying to format a sparse file to contain a filesystem. Just following 
instructions here, it's not like I know what I'm doing. First part went fine:

# dd if=/dev/zero of=rootfs count=1 bs=1k seek=$[2*1024*1024]
1+0 records in
1+0 records out

# ls -lhas
total 12k
 12K -rw-r--r--    1 root     root         2.0G Dec 10 12:35 rootfs

So far so good. Next step is 

# /sbin/mke2fs -v rootfs
mke2fs 1.27 (8-Mar-2002)
rootfs is not a block special device.
Proceed anyway? (y,n) y
rootfs is mounted; will not make a filesystem here!

umount rootfs says it isn't mounted.

Now what? I've tried just about everything in man:mkfs.

signed,
dazed and confused
-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Carla Schroder
Bratgrrl Computing
www.bratgrrl.com
This message brought to you by
Red Hat 8 and Kmail
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~