FSCK(8) System Administration FSCK(8)
NAME
fsck - check and repair a Linux filesystem
SYNOPSIS
fsck [-lsAVRTMNP] [-r [fd]] [-C [fd]] [-t fstype] [filesystem...] [--] [fs-specific-options]
DESCRIPTION
fsck is used to check and optionally repair one or more Linux filesystems. filesystem can be a device name (e.g.,
/dev/hdc1, /dev/sdb2), a mount point (e.g., /, /usr, /home), or an filesystem label or UUID specifier (e.g.,
UUID=8868abf6-88c5-4a83-98b8-bfc24057f7bd or LABEL=root). Normally, the fsck program will try to handle
filesystems on different physical disk drives in parallel to reduce the total amount of time needed to check all
of them.
If no filesystems are specified on the command line, and the -A option is not specified, fsck will default to
checking filesystems in /etc/fstab serially. This is equivalent to the -As options.
The exit status returned by fsck is the sum of the following conditions:
0
No errors
1
Filesystem errors corrected
2
System should be rebooted
4
Filesystem errors left uncorrected
8
Operational error
16
Usage or syntax error
32
Checking canceled by user request
128
Shared-library error
The exit status returned when multiple filesystems are checked is the bit-wise OR of the exit statuses for each
filesystem that is checked.
In actuality, fsck is simply a front-end for the various filesystem checkers (fsck.fstype) available under Linux.
The filesystem-specific checker is searched for in the PATH environment variable. If the PATH is undefined then
fallback to /sbin.
Please see the filesystem-specific checker manual pages for further details.
OPTIONS
-l
Create an exclusive flock(2) lock file (/run/fsck/<diskname>.lock) for whole-disk device. This option can be
used with one device only (this means that -A and -l are mutually exclusive). This option is recommended when
more fsck instances are executed in the same time. The option is ignored when used for multiple devices or
for non-rotating disks. fsck does not lock underlying devices when executed to check stacked devices (e.g. MD
or DM) - this feature is not implemented yet.
-r [fd]
Report certain statistics for each fsck when it completes. These statistics include the exit status, the
maximum run set size (in kilobytes), the elapsed all-clock time and the user and system CPU time used by the
fsck run. For example:
/dev/sda1: status 0, rss 92828, real 4.002804, user 2.677592, sys 0.86186
GUI front-ends may specify a file descriptor fd, in which case the progress bar information will be sent to
that file descriptor in a machine parsable format. For example:
/dev/sda1 0 92828 4.002804 2.677592 0.86186
-s
Serialize fsck operations. This is a good idea if you are checking multiple filesystems and the checkers are
in an interactive mode. (Note: e2fsck(8) runs in an interactive mode by default. To make e2fsck(8) run in a
non-interactive mode, you must either specify the -p or -a option, if you wish for errors to be corrected
automatically, or the -n option if you do not.)
-t fslist
Specifies the type(s) of filesystem to be checked. When the -A flag is specified, only filesystems that match
fslist are checked. The fslist parameter is a comma-separated list of filesystems and options specifiers. All
of the filesystems in this comma-separated list may be prefixed by a negation operator 'no' or '!', which
requests that only those filesystems not listed in fslist will be checked. If none of the filesystems in
fslist is prefixed by a negation operator, then only those listed filesystems will be checked.
Options specifiers may be included in the comma-separated fslist. They must have the format opts=fs-option.
If an options specifier is present, then only filesystems which contain fs-option in their mount options
field of /etc/fstab will be checked. If the options specifier is prefixed by a negation operator, then only
those filesystems that do not have fs-option in their mount options field of /etc/fstab will be checked.
For example, if opts=ro appears in fslist, then only filesystems listed in /etc/fstab with the ro option will
be checked.
For compatibility with Mandrake distributions whose boot scripts depend upon an unauthorized UI change to the
fsck program, if a filesystem type of loop is found in fslist, it is treated as if opts=loop were specified
as an argument to the -t option.
Normally, the filesystem type is deduced by searching for filesys in the /etc/fstab file and using the
corresponding entry. If the type cannot be deduced, and there is only a single filesystem given as an
argument to the -t option, fsck will use the specified filesystem type. If this type is not available, then
the default filesystem type (currently ext2) is used.
-A
Walk through the /etc/fstab file and try to check all filesystems in one run. This option is typically used
from the /etc/rc system initialization file, instead of multiple commands for checking a single filesystem.
The root filesystem will be checked first unless the -P option is specified (see below). After that,
filesystems will be checked in the order specified by the fs_passno (the sixth) field in the /etc/fstab file.
Filesystems with a fs_passno value of 0 are skipped and are not checked at all. Filesystems with a fs_passno
value of greater than zero will be checked in order, with filesystems with the lowest fs_passno number being
checked first. If there are multiple filesystems with the same pass number, fsck will attempt to check them
in parallel, although it will avoid running multiple filesystem checks on the same physical disk.
fsck does not check stacked devices (RAIDs, dm-crypt, ...) in parallel with any other device. See below for
FSCK_FORCE_ALL_PARALLEL setting. The /sys filesystem is used to determine dependencies between devices.
Hence, a very common configuration in /etc/fstab files is to set the root filesystem to have a fs_passno
value of 1 and to set all other filesystems to have a fs_passno value of 2. This will allow fsck to
automatically run filesystem checkers in parallel if it is advantageous to do so. System administrators might
choose not to use this configuration if they need to avoid multiple filesystem checks running in parallel for
some reason - for example, if the machine in question is short on memory so that excessive paging is a
concern.
fsck normally does not check whether the device actually exists before calling a filesystem specific checker.
Therefore non-existing devices may cause the system to enter filesystem repair mode during boot if the
filesystem specific checker returns a fatal error. The /etc/fstab mount option nofail may be used to have
fsck skip non-existing devices. fsck also skips non-existing devices that have the special filesystem type
auto.
-C [fd]
Display completion/progress bars for those filesystem checkers (currently only for ext[234]) which support
them. fsck will manage the filesystem checkers so that only one of them will display a progress bar at a
time. GUI front-ends may specify a file descriptor fd, in which case the progress bar information will be
sent to that file descriptor.
-M
Do not check mounted filesystems and return an exit status of 0 for mounted filesystems.
-N
Don’t execute, just show what would be done.
-P
When the -A flag is set, check the root filesystem in parallel with the other filesystems. This is not the
safest thing in the world to do, since if the root filesystem is in doubt things like the e2fsck(8)
executable might be corrupted! This option is mainly provided for those sysadmins who don’t want to
repartition the root filesystem to be small and compact (which is really the right solution).
-R
When checking all filesystems with the -A flag, skip the root filesystem. (This is useful in case the root
filesystem has already been mounted read-write.)
-T
Don’t show the title on startup.
-V
Produce verbose output, including all filesystem-specific commands that are executed.
-?, --help
Display help text and exit.
--version
Display version information and exit.
FILESYSTEM SPECIFIC OPTIONS
Options which are not understood by fsck are passed to the filesystem-specific checker!
These options must not take arguments, as there is no way for fsck to be able to properly guess which options
take arguments and which don’t.
Options and arguments which follow the -- are treated as filesystem-specific options to be passed to the
filesystem-specific checker.
Please note that fsck is not designed to pass arbitrarily complicated options to filesystem-specific checkers. If
you’re doing something complicated, please just execute the filesystem-specific checker directly. If you pass
fsck some horribly complicated options and arguments, and it doesn’t do what you expect, don’t bother reporting
it as a bug. You’re almost certainly doing something that you shouldn’t be doing with fsck. Options to different
filesystem-specific fsck’s are not standardized.
ENVIRONMENT
The fsck program’s behavior is affected by the following environment variables:
FSCK_FORCE_ALL_PARALLEL
If this environment variable is set, fsck will attempt to check all of the specified filesystems in parallel,
regardless of whether the filesystems appear to be on the same device. (This is useful for RAID systems or
high-end storage systems such as those sold by companies such as IBM or EMC.) Note that the fs_passno value
is still used.
FSCK_MAX_INST
This environment variable will limit the maximum number of filesystem checkers that can be running at one
time. This allows configurations which have a large number of disks to avoid fsck starting too many
filesystem checkers at once, which might overload CPU and memory resources available on the system. If this
value is zero, then an unlimited number of processes can be spawned. This is currently the default, but
future versions of fsck may attempt to automatically determine how many filesystem checks can be run based on
gathering accounting data from the operating system.
PATH
The PATH environment variable is used to find filesystem checkers.
FSTAB_FILE
This environment variable allows the system administrator to override the standard location of the /etc/fstab
file. It is also useful for developers who are testing fsck.
LIBBLKID_DEBUG=all
enables libblkid debug output.
LIBMOUNT_DEBUG=all
enables libmount debug output.
FILES
/etc/fstab
AUTHORS
[34mTheodore Ts’o <tytso@mit.edu>>, [34mKarel Zak <kzak@redhat.com>
SEE ALSO
fstab(5), mkfs(8), fsck.ext2(8) or fsck.ext3(8) or e2fsck(8), fsck.cramfs(8), fsck.jfs(8), fsck.nfs(8),
fsck.minix(8), fsck.msdos(8), fsck.vfat(8), fsck.xfs(8), reiserfsck(8)
REPORTING BUGS
For bug reports, use the issue tracker at [34mhttps://github.com/util-linux/util-linux/issues.
AVAILABILITY
The fsck command is part of the util-linux package which can be downloaded from [34mLinux Kernel Archive
<https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/>.
util-linux 2.39 2022-05-11 FSCK(8)
NAME
fsck - check and repair a Linux filesystem
SYNOPSIS
fsck [-lsAVRTMNP] [-r [fd]] [-C [fd]] [-t fstype] [filesystem...] [--] [fs-specific-options]
DESCRIPTION
fsck is used to check and optionally repair one or more Linux filesystems. filesystem can be a device name (e.g.,
/dev/hdc1, /dev/sdb2), a mount point (e.g., /, /usr, /home), or an filesystem label or UUID specifier (e.g.,
UUID=8868abf6-88c5-4a83-98b8-bfc24057f7bd or LABEL=root). Normally, the fsck program will try to handle
filesystems on different physical disk drives in parallel to reduce the total amount of time needed to check all
of them.
If no filesystems are specified on the command line, and the -A option is not specified, fsck will default to
checking filesystems in /etc/fstab serially. This is equivalent to the -As options.
The exit status returned by fsck is the sum of the following conditions:
0
No errors
1
Filesystem errors corrected
2
System should be rebooted
4
Filesystem errors left uncorrected
8
Operational error
16
Usage or syntax error
32
Checking canceled by user request
128
Shared-library error
The exit status returned when multiple filesystems are checked is the bit-wise OR of the exit statuses for each
filesystem that is checked.
In actuality, fsck is simply a front-end for the various filesystem checkers (fsck.fstype) available under Linux.
The filesystem-specific checker is searched for in the PATH environment variable. If the PATH is undefined then
fallback to /sbin.
Please see the filesystem-specific checker manual pages for further details.
OPTIONS
-l
Create an exclusive flock(2) lock file (/run/fsck/<diskname>.lock) for whole-disk device. This option can be
used with one device only (this means that -A and -l are mutually exclusive). This option is recommended when
more fsck instances are executed in the same time. The option is ignored when used for multiple devices or
for non-rotating disks. fsck does not lock underlying devices when executed to check stacked devices (e.g. MD
or DM) - this feature is not implemented yet.
-r [fd]
Report certain statistics for each fsck when it completes. These statistics include the exit status, the
maximum run set size (in kilobytes), the elapsed all-clock time and the user and system CPU time used by the
fsck run. For example:
/dev/sda1: status 0, rss 92828, real 4.002804, user 2.677592, sys 0.86186
GUI front-ends may specify a file descriptor fd, in which case the progress bar information will be sent to
that file descriptor in a machine parsable format. For example:
/dev/sda1 0 92828 4.002804 2.677592 0.86186
-s
Serialize fsck operations. This is a good idea if you are checking multiple filesystems and the checkers are
in an interactive mode. (Note: e2fsck(8) runs in an interactive mode by default. To make e2fsck(8) run in a
non-interactive mode, you must either specify the -p or -a option, if you wish for errors to be corrected
automatically, or the -n option if you do not.)
-t fslist
Specifies the type(s) of filesystem to be checked. When the -A flag is specified, only filesystems that match
fslist are checked. The fslist parameter is a comma-separated list of filesystems and options specifiers. All
of the filesystems in this comma-separated list may be prefixed by a negation operator 'no' or '!', which
requests that only those filesystems not listed in fslist will be checked. If none of the filesystems in
fslist is prefixed by a negation operator, then only those listed filesystems will be checked.
Options specifiers may be included in the comma-separated fslist. They must have the format opts=fs-option.
If an options specifier is present, then only filesystems which contain fs-option in their mount options
field of /etc/fstab will be checked. If the options specifier is prefixed by a negation operator, then only
those filesystems that do not have fs-option in their mount options field of /etc/fstab will be checked.
For example, if opts=ro appears in fslist, then only filesystems listed in /etc/fstab with the ro option will
be checked.
For compatibility with Mandrake distributions whose boot scripts depend upon an unauthorized UI change to the
fsck program, if a filesystem type of loop is found in fslist, it is treated as if opts=loop were specified
as an argument to the -t option.
Normally, the filesystem type is deduced by searching for filesys in the /etc/fstab file and using the
corresponding entry. If the type cannot be deduced, and there is only a single filesystem given as an
argument to the -t option, fsck will use the specified filesystem type. If this type is not available, then
the default filesystem type (currently ext2) is used.
-A
Walk through the /etc/fstab file and try to check all filesystems in one run. This option is typically used
from the /etc/rc system initialization file, instead of multiple commands for checking a single filesystem.
The root filesystem will be checked first unless the -P option is specified (see below). After that,
filesystems will be checked in the order specified by the fs_passno (the sixth) field in the /etc/fstab file.
Filesystems with a fs_passno value of 0 are skipped and are not checked at all. Filesystems with a fs_passno
value of greater than zero will be checked in order, with filesystems with the lowest fs_passno number being
checked first. If there are multiple filesystems with the same pass number, fsck will attempt to check them
in parallel, although it will avoid running multiple filesystem checks on the same physical disk.
fsck does not check stacked devices (RAIDs, dm-crypt, ...) in parallel with any other device. See below for
FSCK_FORCE_ALL_PARALLEL setting. The /sys filesystem is used to determine dependencies between devices.
Hence, a very common configuration in /etc/fstab files is to set the root filesystem to have a fs_passno
value of 1 and to set all other filesystems to have a fs_passno value of 2. This will allow fsck to
automatically run filesystem checkers in parallel if it is advantageous to do so. System administrators might
choose not to use this configuration if they need to avoid multiple filesystem checks running in parallel for
some reason - for example, if the machine in question is short on memory so that excessive paging is a
concern.
fsck normally does not check whether the device actually exists before calling a filesystem specific checker.
Therefore non-existing devices may cause the system to enter filesystem repair mode during boot if the
filesystem specific checker returns a fatal error. The /etc/fstab mount option nofail may be used to have
fsck skip non-existing devices. fsck also skips non-existing devices that have the special filesystem type
auto.
-C [fd]
Display completion/progress bars for those filesystem checkers (currently only for ext[234]) which support
them. fsck will manage the filesystem checkers so that only one of them will display a progress bar at a
time. GUI front-ends may specify a file descriptor fd, in which case the progress bar information will be
sent to that file descriptor.
-M
Do not check mounted filesystems and return an exit status of 0 for mounted filesystems.
-N
Don’t execute, just show what would be done.
-P
When the -A flag is set, check the root filesystem in parallel with the other filesystems. This is not the
safest thing in the world to do, since if the root filesystem is in doubt things like the e2fsck(8)
executable might be corrupted! This option is mainly provided for those sysadmins who don’t want to
repartition the root filesystem to be small and compact (which is really the right solution).
-R
When checking all filesystems with the -A flag, skip the root filesystem. (This is useful in case the root
filesystem has already been mounted read-write.)
-T
Don’t show the title on startup.
-V
Produce verbose output, including all filesystem-specific commands that are executed.
-?, --help
Display help text and exit.
--version
Display version information and exit.
FILESYSTEM SPECIFIC OPTIONS
Options which are not understood by fsck are passed to the filesystem-specific checker!
These options must not take arguments, as there is no way for fsck to be able to properly guess which options
take arguments and which don’t.
Options and arguments which follow the -- are treated as filesystem-specific options to be passed to the
filesystem-specific checker.
Please note that fsck is not designed to pass arbitrarily complicated options to filesystem-specific checkers. If
you’re doing something complicated, please just execute the filesystem-specific checker directly. If you pass
fsck some horribly complicated options and arguments, and it doesn’t do what you expect, don’t bother reporting
it as a bug. You’re almost certainly doing something that you shouldn’t be doing with fsck. Options to different
filesystem-specific fsck’s are not standardized.
ENVIRONMENT
The fsck program’s behavior is affected by the following environment variables:
FSCK_FORCE_ALL_PARALLEL
If this environment variable is set, fsck will attempt to check all of the specified filesystems in parallel,
regardless of whether the filesystems appear to be on the same device. (This is useful for RAID systems or
high-end storage systems such as those sold by companies such as IBM or EMC.) Note that the fs_passno value
is still used.
FSCK_MAX_INST
This environment variable will limit the maximum number of filesystem checkers that can be running at one
time. This allows configurations which have a large number of disks to avoid fsck starting too many
filesystem checkers at once, which might overload CPU and memory resources available on the system. If this
value is zero, then an unlimited number of processes can be spawned. This is currently the default, but
future versions of fsck may attempt to automatically determine how many filesystem checks can be run based on
gathering accounting data from the operating system.
PATH
The PATH environment variable is used to find filesystem checkers.
FSTAB_FILE
This environment variable allows the system administrator to override the standard location of the /etc/fstab
file. It is also useful for developers who are testing fsck.
LIBBLKID_DEBUG=all
enables libblkid debug output.
LIBMOUNT_DEBUG=all
enables libmount debug output.
FILES
/etc/fstab
AUTHORS
[34mTheodore Ts’o <tytso@mit.edu>>, [34mKarel Zak <kzak@redhat.com>
SEE ALSO
fstab(5), mkfs(8), fsck.ext2(8) or fsck.ext3(8) or e2fsck(8), fsck.cramfs(8), fsck.jfs(8), fsck.nfs(8),
fsck.minix(8), fsck.msdos(8), fsck.vfat(8), fsck.xfs(8), reiserfsck(8)
REPORTING BUGS
For bug reports, use the issue tracker at [34mhttps://github.com/util-linux/util-linux/issues.
AVAILABILITY
The fsck command is part of the util-linux package which can be downloaded from [34mLinux Kernel Archive
<https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/>.
util-linux 2.39 2022-05-11 FSCK(8)