Cannot mount an EBS partition, file system is of type "data"

M. Andersen

2/6/23, 3:02 PM

I have inherited the administration duties on an EC2 instance with a single EBS volume mounted. The device (xvda) is partitioned, with xvda2 mounted as root (/), but I have no idea what is on xvda1, or why it exists.

$ lsblk<br>
NAMEMAJ:MIN RM  SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTM
xvda    202:0    0  600G  0 disk
├─xvda1 202:1    0    1M  0 part
└─xvda2 202:2    0  600G  0 part /

When I attempt to mount the partition so I can check the contents, I get an error:

$ sudo mount /dev/xvda1 /mnt/xvda1
mount: /mnt/xvda1: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/xvda1, missing codepage or helper program, or other error.

The File system for the partition displays as "data":

$ sudo file -sL /dev/xvd*
/dev/xvda:  DOS/MBR boot sector
/dev/xvda1: data
/dev/xvda2: SGI XFS filesystem data (blksz 4096, inosz 512, v2 dirs)

If I'm understanding correctly, this means that file can't identify the type of file system. It doesn't appear that the partition is empty:

$ sudo blockdev --getsize64 /dev/xvda1
1048576

I'm at a loss in terms of trying to understand why this partition exists, what may be on it, or whether it's necessary. For context, I'm interested in eliminating this partition, if it's unnecessary, because I would like to downsize the volume (which is approx. 2x as large as is needed). I can't get far in the convoluted process of downsizing the volume due to the existence this mystery partition.

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I sit in a Tesla and translated this thread with Ai:

EN: Cannot mount an EBS partition, file system is of type "data"

TH: Cannot mount an EBS partition, file system is of type "data"

RO: Cannot mount an EBS partition, file system is of type "data"

RU: Cannot mount an EBS partition, file system is of type "data"

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