2 .\" Copyright 2006 by Theodore Ts'o. All Rights Reserved.
3 .\" This file may be copied under the terms of the GNU Public License.
5 .TH e2fsck.conf 5 "@E2FSPROGS_MONTH@ @E2FSPROGS_YEAR@" "E2fsprogs version @E2FSPROGS_VERSION@"
7 e2fsck.conf \- Configuration file for e2fsck
10 is the configuration file for
12 It controls the default behavior of
14 while it is checking ext2, ext3, or ext4 filesystems.
18 file uses an INI-style format. Stanzas, or top-level sections, are
19 delimited by square braces: [ ]. Within each section, each line
20 defines a relation, which assigns tags to values, or to a subsection,
21 which contains further relations or subsections.
22 .\" Tags can be assigned multiple values
23 An example of the INI-style format used by this configuration file
38 subtag1 = subtag_value_a
40 subtag1 = subtag_value_b
42 subtag2 = subtag_value_c
52 Comments are delimited by a semicolon (';') or a hash ('#') character
53 at the beginning of the comment, and are terminated by the end of
56 Tags and values must be quoted using double quotes if they contain
57 spaces. Within a quoted string, the standard backslash interpretations
58 apply: "\en" (for the newline character),
59 "\et" (for the tab character), "\eb" (for the backspace character),
60 and "\e\e" (for the backslash character).
62 The following stanzas are used in the
64 file. They will be described in more detail in future sections of this
68 This stanza contains general configuration parameters for
73 This stanza allows the administrator to reconfigure how e2fsck handles
74 various filesystem inconsistencies.
77 This stanza controls when e2fsck will attempt to use scratch files to
78 reduce the need for memory.
79 .SH THE [options] STANZA
80 The following relations are defined in the
85 If this relation is set to a boolean value of true, then if the user
86 interrupts e2fsck using ^C, and the filesystem is not explicitly flagged
87 as containing errors, e2fsck will exit with an exit status of 0 instead
88 of 32. This setting defaults to false.
91 Unfortunately, due to Windows' unfortunate design decision
92 to configure the hardware clock to tick localtime, instead
93 of the more proper and less error-prone UTC time, many
94 users end up in the situation where the system clock is
95 incorrectly set at the time when e2fsck is run.
97 Historically this was usually due to some distributions
98 having buggy init scripts and/or installers that didn't
99 correctly detect this case and take appropriate
100 countermeasures. However, it's still possible, despite the
101 best efforts of init script and installer authors to not be
102 able to detect this misconfiguration, usually due to a
103 buggy or misconfigured virtualization manager or the
104 installer not having access to a network time server
105 during the installation process. So by default, we allow
106 the superblock times to be fudged by up to 24 hours.
107 This can be disabled by setting
110 boolean value of false. This setting defaults to true.
112 .I broken_system_clock
115 program has some heuristics that assume that the system clock is
116 correct. In addition, many system programs make similar assumptions.
117 For example, the UUID library depends on time not going backwards in
118 order for it to be able to make its guarantees about issuing universally
119 unique ID's. Systems with broken system clocks, are well, broken.
120 However, broken system clocks, particularly in embedded systems, do
121 exist. E2fsck will attempt to use heuristics to determine if the time
122 can not be trusted; and to skip time-based checks if this is true. If
123 this boolean is set to true, then e2fsck will always assume that the
124 system clock can not be trusted.
126 .I buggy_init_scripts
127 This boolean relation is an alias for
129 for backwards compatibility; it used to
130 be that the behavior defined by
132 above defaulted to false, and
133 .I buggy_init_scripts
134 would enable superblock time field to be wrong by up to 24 hours. When
135 we changed the default, we also renamed this boolean relation to
136 .IR accept_time_fudge.
138 .I clear_test_fs_flag
139 This boolean relation controls whether or not
142 the test_fs flag if the ext4 filesystem is available on the system. It
145 .I defer_check_on_battery
146 This boolean relation controls whether or not the interval between
147 filesystem checks (either based on time or number of mounts) should
148 be doubled if the system is running on battery. This setting defaults to
151 .I indexed_dir_slack_percentage
154 repacks a indexed directory, reserve the specified percentage of
155 empty space in each leaf nodes so that a few new entries can
156 be added to the directory without splitting leaf nodes, so that
157 the average fill ratio of directories can be maintained at a
158 higher, more efficient level. This relation defaults to 20
164 relation contains a relative pathname, then the log file will be placed
165 in the directory named by the
170 This relation contains an alternate directory that will be used if the
171 directory specified by
173 is not available or is not writeable.
176 If this boolean relation is true, them if the directories specified by
180 are not available or are not yet writeable, e2fsck will save the output
181 in a memory buffer, and a child process will periodically test to see if
182 the log directory has become available after the boot sequence has
183 mounted the requiste filesytem for reading/writing. This implements the
184 functionality provided by
186 for e2fsck log files.
189 This relation specifies the file name where a copy of e2fsck's output
190 will be written. If certain problem reports are suppressed using the
191 .I max_count_problems
192 relation, (or on a per-problem basis using the
194 relation), the full set of problem reports will be written to the log
195 file. The filename may contain various percent-expressions (%D, %T, %N,
196 etc.) which will be expanded so that the file name for the log file can
197 include things like date, time, device name, and other run-time
200 section for more details.
202 .I max_count_problems
203 This relation specifies the maximum number of problem reports of a
204 particular type will be printed to stdout before further problem reports
205 of that type are squelched. This can be useful if the console is slow
206 (i.e., connected to a serial port) and so a large amount of output could
207 end up delaying the boot process for a long time (potentially hours).
210 If this boolean relation is true, e2fsck will print the file system
211 features as part of its verbose reporting (i.e., if the
216 If this boolean relation is true, e2fsck will run as if the options
218 are always specified. This will cause e2fsck to print timing statistics
219 on a pass by pass basis for full file system checks.
222 If this boolean relation is true, e2fsck will run as if the option
224 is always specified. This will cause e2fsck to print some additional
225 information at the end of each full file system check.
226 .SH THE [problems] STANZA
229 stanza names a problem code specified with a leading "0x" followed by
231 The value of the tag is a subsection where the relations in that
232 subsection override the default treatment of that particular problem
235 Note that inappropriate settings in this stanza may cause
237 to behave incorrectly, or even crash. Most system administrators should
238 not be making changes to this section without referring to source code.
240 Within each problem code's subsection, the following tags may be used:
243 This relation allows the message which is printed when this filesystem
244 inconsistency is detected to be overridden.
247 This boolean relation overrides the default behavior controlling
248 whether this filesystem problem should be automatically fixed when
250 is running in preen mode.
253 This integer relation overrides the
254 .I max_count_problems
255 parameter (set in the options section) for this particular problem.
258 This boolean relation overrides the default behavior determining
259 whether or not the filesystem will be marked as inconsistent if the user
260 declines to fix the reported problem.
263 This boolean relation overrides whether the default answer for this
264 problem (or question) should be "no".
267 This boolean relation overrides the default behavior controlling
268 whether or not the description for this filesystem problem should
271 is running in preen mode.
274 This boolean relation overrides the default behavior controlling
275 whether or not the description for this filesystem problem should
276 be suppressed when a problem forced not to be fixed, either because
280 option or because the
282 flag has been set for the problem.
285 This boolean option, if set to true, forces a problem to never be fixed.
286 That is, it will be as if the user problem responds 'no' to the question
287 of 'should this problem be fixed?'. The
289 option even overrides the
291 option given on the command-line (just for the specific problem, of course).
292 .SH THE [scratch_files] STANZA
293 The following relations are defined in the
298 If the directory named by this relation exists and is writeable, then
299 e2fsck will attempt to use this directory to store scratch files instead
300 of using in-memory data structures.
303 If this relation is set, then in-memory data structures be used if the
304 number of directories in the filesystem are fewer than amount specified.
307 This relation controls whether or not the scratch file directory is used
308 instead of an in-memory data structure for directory information. It
312 This relation controls whether or not the scratch file directory is used
313 instead of an in-memory data structure when tracking inode counts. It
316 E2fsck has the facility to save the information from an e2fsck run in a
317 directory so that a system administrator can review its output at their
318 leisure. This allows information captured during the automatic e2fsck
319 preen run, as well as a manually started e2fsck run, to be saved for
320 posterity. This facility is controlled by the
323 .IR log_dir_fallback ,
332 may contain the following percent-expressions that will be expanded as
336 The current day of the month
339 The current date; this is a equivalent of
343 The hostname of the system.
346 The current hour in 24-hour format (00..23)
349 The current month as a two-digit number (01..12)
352 The current minute (00..59)
355 The name of the block device containing the file system, with any
356 directory pathname stripped off.
359 The pid of the e2fsck process
362 The current time expressed as the number of seconds since 1970-01-01
366 The current second (00..59)
369 The current time; this is equivalent of
373 The name of the user running e2fsck.
376 This percent expression does not expand to anything, but it signals that
377 any following date or time expressions should be expressed in UTC time
378 instead of the local timzeone.
381 The last two digits of the current year (00..99)
384 The current year (i.e., 2012).
386 The following recipe will prevent e2fsck from aborting during the boot
387 process when a filesystem contains orphaned files. (Of course, this is
388 not always a good idea, since critical files that are needed for the
389 security of the system could potentially end up in lost+found, and
390 starting the system without first having a system administrator check
391 things out may be dangerous.)
400 description = "@u @i %i. "
404 The following recipe will cause an e2fsck logfile to be written to the
405 directory /var/log/e2fsck, with a filename that contains the device
406 name, the hostname of the system, the date, and time: e.g.,
407 "e2fsck-sda3.server.INFO.20120314-112142". If the directory containing
408 /var/log is located on the root file system
409 which is initially mounted read-only, then the output will be saved in
410 memory and written out once the root file system has been remounted
411 read/write. To avoid too much detail from being written to the serial
412 console (which could potentially slow down the boot sequence), only print
413 no more than 16 instances of each type of file system corruption.
418 max_count_problems = 16
420 log_dir = /var/log/e2fsck
422 log_filename = e2fsck-%N.%h.INFO.%D-%T
429 The configuration file for