2 .\" Copyright 1993, 1994, 1995 by Theodore Ts'o. All Rights Reserved.
3 .\" This file may be copied under the terms of the GNU Public License.
5 .TH FSCK 8 "@E2FSPROGS_MONTH@ @E2FSPROGS_YEAR@" "E2fsprogs version @E2FSPROGS_VERSION@"
7 fsck \- check and repair a Linux file system
22 is used to check and optionally repair a one or more Linux file systems.
24 can be a device name (e.g.
25 .IR /dev/hdc1 ", " /dev/sdb2 ),
27 .IR / ", " /usr ", " /home ),
28 or an ext2 label or UUID specifier (e.g.
29 UUID=8868abf6-88c5-4a83-98b8-bfc24057f7bd or LABEL=root).
32 program will try to run filesystems on different physical disk drives
33 in parallel to reduce total amount time to check all of the filesystems.
35 The exit code returned by
37 is the sum of the following conditions:
41 \ 1\ \-\ File system errors corrected
43 \ 2\ \-\ System should be rebooted
45 \ 4\ \-\ File system errors left uncorrected
47 \ 8\ \-\ Operational error
49 \ 16\ \-\ Usage or syntax error
51 \ 128\ \-\ Shared library error
53 The exit code returned when all file systems are checked using the
55 option is the bit-wise OR of the exit codes for each
56 file system that is checked.
60 is simply a front-end for the various file system checkers
61 (\fBfsck\fR.\fIfstype\fR) available under Linux. The file
62 system-specific checker is searched for in
68 and finally in the directories listed in the PATH environment
69 variable. Please see the file system-specific checker manual pages for
76 operations. This is a good idea if you checking multiple
77 filesystems and the checkers are in an interactive mode. (Note:
79 runs in an interactive mode by default. To make
81 run in a non-interactive mode, you must either specify the
85 option, if you wish for errors to be corrected automatically, or the
87 option if you do not.)
90 Specifies the type of file system to be checked. When the
92 flag is specified, only filesystems that match
98 then only filesystems whose type does not match
102 Normally, the filesystem type is deduced by searching for
106 file and using the corresponding entry.
107 If the type can not be deduced,
109 will use the type specified by the
111 option if it specifies a unique filesystem type. If this type is not
112 available, then the default file system type (currently ext2) is used.
117 file and try to check all file systems in one run. This option is
118 typically used from the
120 system initalization file, instead of multiple commands for checking
121 a single file system.
123 The root filesystem will be checked first unless the
125 option is specified (see below). After that,
126 filesystems will be checked in the order specified by the
128 (the sixth) field in the
133 value of 0 are skipped and are not checked at all.
134 If there are multiple filesystems with the same pass number,
135 fsck will attempt to check them in parallel, although it will avoid running
136 multiple filesystem checks on the same physical disk.
137 Hence, a very common configuration in
139 files is to set the root filesystem to have a
142 and to set all filesystems to have a
144 value of 2. This will allow
146 to automatically run filesystem checkers in parallel if it is advantageous
147 to do so. System administrators might choose
148 not to use this configuration if they need to avoid multiple filesystem
149 checks running in parallel for some reason --- for example, if the
150 machine in question is short on memory so that
151 excessive paging is a concern.
154 Display completion/progress bars for those filesystems checkers (currently
155 only for ext2) which support them. Fsck will manage the filesystem checkers
156 so that only one of them will display a progress bar at a time.
159 Don't execute, just show what would be done.
164 flag is set, check the root filesystem in parallel with the other filesystems.
165 This is not the safest thing in the world to do,
166 since if the root filesystem is in doubt things like the
168 executable might be corrupted! This option is mainly provided
169 for those sysadmins who don't want to repartition the root
170 filesystem to be small and compact (which is really the right solution).
173 When checking all file systems with the
175 flag, skip the root file system (in case it's already mounted read-write).
178 Don't show the title on startup.
181 Produce verbose output, including all file system-specific commands
185 Options which which are not understood by
187 are passed to the filesystem-specific checker. These arguments
189 not take arguments, as there is no
192 to be able to properly guess which arguments take options and which
195 Options and arguments which follow the
197 are treated as file system-specific options to be passed to the
198 file system-specific checker.
200 Please note that fsck is not
201 designed to pass arbitrarily complicated options to filesystem-specific
202 checkers. If you're doing something complicated, please just
203 execute the filesystem-specific checker directly. If you pass
205 some horribly complicated option and arguments, and it doesn't do
207 .B don't bother reporting it as a bug.
208 You're almost certainly doing something that you shouldn't be doing
212 Currently, standardized file system-specific options are somewhat in
213 flux. Although not guaranteed, the following options are supported
214 by most file system checkers:
217 Automatically repair the file system without any questions (use
218 this option with caution). Note that
222 for backwards compatibility only. This option is mapped to
225 option which is safe to use, unlike the
227 option that most file system checkers support.
230 Interactively repair the filesystem (ask for confirmations). Note: It
231 is generally a bad idea to use this option if multiple fsck's are being
232 run in parallel. Also note that this is
234 default behavior; it supports this option for backwards compatibility
237 Theodore Ts'o (tytso@mit.edu)
239 The manual page was shamelessly adapted from David Engel and Fred van
242 front end program, which was in turn shamelessly
243 adapted from Remy Card's version for the ext2 file system.