If you have to create a journal without writing your own "hello world derived application", you can use utility program jf_create. This is a usage example:
tiian@linux:~/tutorial> jf_create -j jf_tut_foo-journal -n 5 tiian@linux:~/tutorial> ls -la jf_tut_foo-journal -rw-r--r-- 1 tiian users 8278 2005-08-29 22:12 jf_tut_foo-journal tiian@linux:~/tutorial> jf_report -j jf_tut_foo-journal <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <journal> <header magic_number='0x41524153' version='1' file_id_mask='0x38' file_id_mask_shift='3' size_mask='0xffffffc0' size_mask_shift='6' file_size='4194304' file_num='3' rotation_threshold='0.800' ctrl_recs='36' journal_recs='32980' /> <journaled_file_table max_files='8' number_of_files='1' file_table='0x804b170'> <file id='0' name='jf_tut_foo-journal' last_pos='32980' last_size='0' status='0' last_uc_pos='0' last_uc_size='32980' stream='0x804b008' /> </journaled_file_table> <records> </records> </journal>a journal able to manage at least 5 journaled files has been created. Looking at the output produced by jf_report we can see the created journal can manage up to 7 (8 - 1) journaled files. First journaled file is reserved because it's the journal itself.