Fedora had a bug where a poor user thought that --alloc-start meant that the filesystem would be created at that offset into the device, rather than just starting allocations at that offset. A subtle difference, but worth clarifying, because the manpage is misleading on this point.
The original commit log for this option says: Add mkfs.btrfs -A offset to control allocation start on devices This is a utility option for the resizer, it makes sure to allocate at offset bytes in the disk or higher. It ensures the resizer will have something to move when testing it. so allude to that intended use in the manpage. Signed-off-by: Eric Sandeen <sand...@redhat.com> --- diff --git a/man/mkfs.btrfs.8.in b/man/mkfs.btrfs.8.in index dabeb62..bef509d 100644 --- a/man/mkfs.btrfs.8.in +++ b/man/mkfs.btrfs.8.in @@ -30,7 +30,7 @@ spanning across the specified \fI devices\fP. .SH OPTIONS .TP \fB\-A\fR, \fB\-\-alloc\-start \fIoffset\fR -Specify the offset from the start of the device to start the btrfs filesystem. The default value is zero, or the start of the device. +Specify the offset from the start of the device at which to start allocations in this btrfs filesystem. The default value is zero, or the start of the device. This option is intended only for debugging filesystem resize operations. .TP \fB\-b\fR, \fB\-\-byte\-count \fIsize\fR Specify the size of the resultant filesystem. If this option is not used, -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-btrfs" in the body of a message to majord...@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html