Manual: fsck.ext4
E2FSCK(8) System Manager's Manual E2FSCK(8)
NAME
e2fsck - check a Linux ext2/ext3/ext4 file system
SYNOPSIS
e2fsck [ -pacnyrdfkvtDFV ] [ -b superblock ] [ -B blocksize ] [ -l|-L bad_blocks_file ] [ -C fd ] [ -j external-jourā
nal ] [ -E extended_options ] [ -z undo_file ] device
DESCRIPTION
e2fsck is used to check the ext2/ext3/ext4 family of file systems. For ext3 and ext4 file systems that use a jourā
nal, if the system has been shut down uncleanly without any errors, normally, after replaying the committed transacā
tions in the journal, the file system should be marked as clean. Hence, for file systems that use journaling, e2fsck
will normally replay the journal and exit, unless its superblock indicates that further checking is required.
device is a block device (e.g., /dev/sdc1) or file containing the file system.
Note that in general it is not safe to run e2fsck on mounted file systems. The only exception is if the -n option is
specified, and -c, -l, or -L options are not specified. However, even if it is safe to do so, the results printed by
e2fsck are not valid if the file system is mounted. If e2fsck asks whether or not you should check a file system
which is mounted, the only correct answer is ``no''. Only experts who really know what they are doing should conā
sider answering this question in any other way.
If e2fsck is run in interactive mode (meaning that none of -y, -n, or -p are specified), the program will ask the
user to fix each problem found in the file system. A response of 'y' will fix the error; 'n' will leave the error
unfixed; and 'a' will fix the problem and all subsequent problems; pressing Enter will proceed with the default reā
sponse, which is printed before the question mark. Pressing Control-C terminates e2fsck immediately.
OPTIONS
-a This option does the same thing as the -p option. It is provided for backwards compatibility only; it is sugā
gested that people use -p option whenever possible.
-b superblock
Instead of using the normal superblock, use an alternative superblock specified by superblock. This option is
normally used when the primary superblock has been corrupted. The location of backup superblocks is dependent
on the file system's blocksize, the number of blocks per group, and features such as sparse_super.
Additional backup superblocks can be determined by using the mke2fs program using the -n option to print out
where the superblocks exist, supposing mke2fs is supplied with arguments that are consistent with the file
system's layout (e.g. blocksize, blocks per group, sparse_super, etc.).
If an alternative superblock is specified and the file system is not opened read-only, e2fsck will make sure
that the primary superblock is updated appropriately upon completion of the file system check.
-B blocksize
Normally, e2fsck will search for the superblock at various different block sizes in an attempt to find the apā
propriate block size. This search can be fooled in some cases. This option forces e2fsck to only try locatā
ing the superblock at a particular blocksize. If the superblock is not found, e2fsck will terminate with a
fatal error.
-c This option causes e2fsck to use badblocks(8) program to do a read-only scan of the device in order to find
any bad blocks. If any bad blocks are found, they are added to the bad block inode to prevent them from being
allocated to a file or directory. If this option is specified twice, then the bad block scan will be done usā
ing a non-destructive read-write test.
-C fd This option causes e2fsck to write completion information to the specified file descriptor so that the
progress of the file system check can be monitored. This option is typically used by programs which are runā
ning e2fsck. If the file descriptor number is negative, then absolute value of the file descriptor will be
used, and the progress information will be suppressed initially. It can later be enabled by sending the
e2fsck process a SIGUSR1 signal. If the file descriptor specified is 0, e2fsck will print a completion bar as
it goes about its business. This requires that e2fsck is running on a video console or terminal.
-d Print debugging output (useless unless you are debugging e2fsck).
-D Optimize directories in file system. This option causes e2fsck to try to optimize all directories, either by
re-indexing them if the file system supports directory indexing, or by sorting and compressing directories for
smaller directories, or for file systems using traditional linear directories.
Even without the -D option, e2fsck may sometimes optimize a few directories --- for example, if directory inā
dexing is enabled and a directory is not indexed and would benefit from being indexed, or if the index strucā
tures are corrupted and need to be rebuilt. The -D option forces all directories in the file system to be opā
timized. This can sometimes make them a little smaller and slightly faster to search, but in practice, you
should rarely need to use this option.
The -D option will detect directory entries with duplicate names in a single directory, which e2fsck normally
does not enforce for performance reasons.
-E extended_options
Set e2fsck extended options. Extended options are comma separated, and may take an argument using the equals
('=') sign. The following options are supported:
ea_ver=extended_attribute_version
Set the version of the extended attribute blocks which e2fsck will require while checking the file
system. The version number may be 1 or 2. The default extended attribute version format is 2.
journal_only
Only replay the journal if required, but do not perform any further checks or repairs.
fragcheck
During pass 1, print a detailed report of any discontiguous blocks for files in the file system.
discard
Attempt to discard free blocks and unused inode blocks after the full file system check (discardā
ing blocks is useful on solid state devices and sparse / thin-provisioned storage). Note that
discard is done in pass 5 AFTER the file system has been fully checked and only if it does not
contain recognizable errors. However there might be cases where e2fsck does not fully recognize a
problem and hence in this case this option may prevent you from further manual data recovery.
nodiscard
Do not attempt to discard free blocks and unused inode blocks. This option is exactly the oppoā
site of discard option. This is set as default.
no_optimize_extents
Do not offer to optimize the extent tree by eliminating unnecessary width or depth. This can also
be enabled in the options section of /etc/e2fsck.conf.
optimize_extents
Offer to optimize the extent tree by eliminating unnecessary width or depth. This is the default
unless otherwise specified in /etc/e2fsck.conf.
inode_count_fullmap
Trade off using memory for speed when checking a file system with a large number of hard-linked
files. The amount of memory required is proportional to the number of inodes in the file system.
For large file systems, this can be gigabytes of memory. (For example, a 40 TB file system with
2.8 billion inodes will consume an additional 5.7 GB memory if this optimization is enabled.)
This optimization can also be enabled in the options section of /etc/e2fsck.conf.
no_inode_count_fullmap
Disable the inode_count_fullmap optimization. This is the default unless otherwise specified in
/etc/e2fsck.conf.
readahead_kb
Use this many KiB of memory to pre-fetch metadata in the hopes of reducing e2fsck runtime. By deā
fault, this is set to the size of two block groups' inode tables (typically 4 MiB on a regular
ext4 file system); if this amount is more than 1/50th of total physical memory, readahead is disā
abled. Set this to zero to disable readahead entirely.
bmap2extent
Convert block-mapped files to extent-mapped files.
fixes_only
Only fix damaged metadata; do not optimize htree directories or compress extent trees. This opā
tion is incompatible with the -D and -E bmap2extent options.
check_encoding
Force verification of encoded filenames in case-insensitive directories. This is the default mode
if the file system has the strict flag enabled.
unshare_blocks
If the file system has shared blocks, with the shared blocks read-only feature enabled, then this
will unshare all shared blocks and unset the read-only feature bit. If there is not enough free
space then the operation will fail. If the file system does not have the read-only feature bit,
but has shared blocks anyway, then this option will have no effect. Note when using this option,
if there is no free space to clone blocks, there is no prompt to delete files and instead the opā
eration will fail.
Note that unshare_blocks implies the "-f" option to ensure that all passes are run. Additionally,
if "-n" is also specified, e2fsck will simulate trying to allocate enough space to deduplicate.
If this fails, the exit code will be non-zero.
-f Force checking even if the file system seems clean.
-F Flush the file system device's buffer caches before beginning. Only really useful for doing e2fsck time triā
als.
-j external-journal
Set the pathname where the external-journal for this file system can be found.
-k When combined with the -c option, any existing bad blocks in the bad blocks list are preserved, and any new
bad blocks found by running badblocks(8) will be added to the existing bad blocks list.
-l filename
Add the block numbers listed in the file specified by filename to the list of bad blocks. The format of this
file is the same as the one generated by the badblocks(8) program. Note that the block numbers are based on
the blocksize of the file system. Hence, badblocks(8) must be given the blocksize of the file system in order
to obtain correct results. As a result, it is much simpler and safer to use the -c option to e2fsck, since it
will assure that the correct parameters are passed to the badblocks program.
-L filename
Set the bad blocks list to be the list of blocks specified by filename. (This option is the same as the -l
option, except the bad blocks list is cleared before the blocks listed in the file are added to the bad blocks
list.)
-n Open the file system read-only, and assume an answer of `no' to all questions. Allows e2fsck to be used non-
interactively. This option may not be specified at the same time as the -p or -y options.
-p Automatically repair ("preen") the file system. This option will cause e2fsck to automatically fix any file
system problems that can be safely fixed without human intervention. If e2fsck discovers a problem which may
require the system administrator to take additional corrective action, e2fsck will print a description of the
problem and then exit with the value 4 logically or'ed into the exit code. (See the EXIT CODE section.) This
option is normally used by the system's boot scripts. It may not be specified at the same time as the -n or
-y options.
-r This option does nothing at all; it is provided only for backwards compatibility.
-t Print timing statistics for e2fsck. If this option is used twice, additional timing statistics are printed on
a pass by pass basis.
-v Verbose mode.
-V Print version information and exit.
-y Assume an answer of `yes' to all questions; allows e2fsck to be used non-interactively. This option may not
be specified at the same time as the -n or -p options.
-z undo_file
Before overwriting a file system block, write the old contents of the block to an undo file. This undo file
can be used with e2undo(8) to restore the old contents of the file system should something go wrong. If the
empty string is passed as the undo_file argument, the undo file will be written to a file named e2fsck-deā
vice.e2undo in the directory specified via the E2FSPROGS_UNDO_DIR environment variable.
WARNING: The undo file cannot be used to recover from a power or system crash.
EXIT CODE
The exit code returned by e2fsck is the sum of the following conditions:
0 - No errors
1 - File system errors corrected
2 - File system errors corrected, system should
be rebooted
4 - File system errors left uncorrected
8 - Operational error
16 - Usage or syntax error
32 - E2fsck canceled by user request
128 - Shared library error
SIGNALS
The following signals have the following effect when sent to e2fsck.
SIGUSR1
This signal causes e2fsck to start displaying a completion bar or emitting progress information. (See discusā
sion of the -C option.)
SIGUSR2
This signal causes e2fsck to stop displaying a completion bar or emitting progress information.
REPORTING BUGS
Almost any piece of software will have bugs. If you manage to find a file system which causes e2fsck to crash, or
which e2fsck is unable to repair, please report it to the author.
Please include as much information as possible in your bug report. Ideally, include a complete transcript of the
e2fsck run, so I can see exactly what error messages are displayed. (Make sure the messages printed by e2fsck are in
English; if your system has been configured so that e2fsck's messages have been translated into another language,
please set the LC_ALL environment variable to C so that the transcript of e2fsck's output will be useful to me.) If
you have a writable file system where the transcript can be stored, the script(1) program is a handy way to save the
output of e2fsck to a file.
It is also useful to send the output of dumpe2fs(8). If a specific inode or inodes seems to be giving e2fsck trouā
ble, try running the debugfs(8) command and send the output of the stat(1u) command run on the relevant inode(s). If
the inode is a directory, the debugfs dump command will allow you to extract the contents of the directory inode,
which can sent to me after being first run through uuencode(1). The most useful data you can send to help reproduce
the bug is a compressed raw image dump of the file system, generated using e2image(8). See the e2image(8) man page
for more details.
Always include the full version string which e2fsck displays when it is run, so I know which version you are running.
ENVIRONMENT
E2FSCK_CONFIG
Determines the location of the configuration file (see e2fsck.conf(5)).
AUTHOR
This version of e2fsck was written by Theodore Ts'o .
SEE ALSO
e2fsck.conf(5), badblocks(8), dumpe2fs(8), debugfs(8), e2image(8), mke2fs(8), tune2fs(8)
E2fsprogs version 1.47.2 January 2025 E2FSCK(8)