FSCK(8)

NAME
fsck - check and repair a Linux file system

SYNOPSIS
fsck [ -AVRTNP ] [ -s ] [ -t fstype ] [ fs-options ]
filesys [ ... ]

DESCRIPTION
fsck is used to check and optionally repair a Linux file
system. filesys is either the device name (e.g.
/dev/hda1, /dev/sdb2) or the mount point (e.g. /, /usr,
/home) for the file system. If this fsck has several
filesystems on different physical disk drives to check,
this fsck will try to run them in parallel. This reduces
the total amount time it takes to check all of the
filesystems, since fsck takes advantage of the parallelism
of multiple disk spindles.

The exit code returned by fsck is the sum of the following
conditions:
0 - No errors
1 - File system errors corrected
2 - System should be rebooted
4 - File system errors left uncorrected
8 - Operational error
16 - Usage or syntax error
128 - Shared library error
The exit code returned when all file systems are checked
using the -A option is the bit-wise OR of the exit codes
for each file system that is checked.

In actuality, fsck is simply a front-end for the various
file system checkers (fsck.fstype) available under Linux.
The file system-specific checker is searched for in /sbin
first, then in /etc/fs and /etc, and finally in the direc-
tories listed in the PATH environment variable. Please
see the file system-specific checker manual pages for fur-
ther details.

OPTIONS
-A Walk through the /etc/fstab file and try to check
all file systems in one run. This option is typi-
cally used from the /etc/rc system initalization
file, instead of multiple commands for checking a
single file system.

-R When checking all file systems with the -A flag,
skip the root file system (in case it's already
mounted read-write).

-T Don't show the title on startup.

-N Don't execute, just show what would be done.

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-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 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).

-s Serialize fsck operations. This is a good idea if
you checking multiple filesystems in and the check-
ers are in an interactive mode. (Note: e2fsck runs
in an interactive mode by default. To make e2fsck
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.)

-V Produce verbose output, including all file system-
specific commands that are executed.

-t fstype
Specifies the type of file system to be checked.
When the -A flag is specified, only filesystems
that match fstype are checked. If fstype is pre-
fixed with no only filesystems whose filesystem do
not match fstype are checked.

Normally, the filesystem type is deduced by search-
ing for filesys in the /etc/fstab file and using
the corresponding entry. If the type can not be
deduced, fsck will use the type specified by the -t
option if it specifies a unique filesystem type.
If this type is not available, the the default file
system type (currently ext2) is used.

fs-options
Any options which are not understood by fsck, or
which follow the -- option are treated as file sys-
tem-specific options to be passed to the file sys-
tem-specific checker.

Currently, standardized file system-specific options are
somewhat in flux. Although not guaranteed, the following
options are supported by most file system checkers.

-a Automatically repair the file system without any
questions (use this option with caution). Note
that e2fsck supports -a for backwards compatibility
only. This option is mapped to e2fsck's -p option
which is safe to use, unlike the -a option that
most file system checkers support.

-r Interactively repair the filesystem (ask for

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confirmations). Note: It is generally a bad idea
to use this option if multiple fsck's are being run
in parallel. Also note that this is e2fsck default
behavior; it supports this option for backwards
compatibility reasons only.

AUTHOR
Theodore Ts'o (tytso@mit.edu)

The manual page was shamelessly adapted from David Engel
and Fred van Kempen's generic fsck front end program,
which was in turn shamelessly adapted from Remy Card's
version for the ext2 file system.

FILES
/etc/fstab.

SEE ALSO
fstab(5), mkfs(8), fsck.minix(8), fsck.ext2(8) or
e2fsck(8), fsck.xiafs(8).

E2fsprogs version 1.10 April 1997 3

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