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NAME | DESCRIPTION | THE [options] STANZA | THE [problems] STANZA | THE [scratch_files] STANZA | LOGGING | EXAMPLES | FILES | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON |
e2fsck.conf(5) File Formats Manual e2fsck.conf(5)
e2fsck.conf - Configuration file for e2fsck
e2fsck.conf is the configuration file for e2fsck(8). It controls the
default behavior of e2fsck(8) while it is checking ext2, ext3, or
ext4 filesystems.
The e2fsck.conf file uses an INI-style format. Stanzas, or top-level
sections, are delimited by square braces: [ ]. Within each section,
each line defines a relation, which assigns tags to values, or to a
subsection, which contains further relations or subsections. An
example of the INI-style format used by this configuration file
follows below:
[section1]
tag1 = value_a
tag1 = value_b
tag2 = value_c
[section 2]
tag3 = {
subtag1 = subtag_value_a
subtag1 = subtag_value_b
subtag2 = subtag_value_c
}
tag1 = value_d
tag2 = value_e
}
Comments are delimited by a semicolon (';') or a hash ('#') character
at the beginning of the comment, and are terminated by the end of
line character.
Tags and values must be quoted using double quotes if they contain
spaces. Within a quoted string, the standard backslash
interpretations apply: "\n" (for the newline character), "\t" (for
the tab character), "\b" (for the backspace character), and "\\" (for
the backslash character).
The following stanzas are used in the e2fsck.conf file. They will be
described in more detail in future sections of this document.
[options]
This stanza contains general configuration parameters for
e2fsck's behavior.
[problems]
This stanza allows the administrator to reconfigure how e2fsck
handles various filesystem inconsistencies.
[scratch_files]
This stanza controls when e2fsck will attempt to use scratch
files to reduce the need for memory.
The following relations are defined in the [options] stanza.
allow_cancellation
If this relation is set to a boolean value of true, then if
the user interrupts e2fsck using ^C, and the filesystem is not
explicitly flagged as containing errors, e2fsck will exit with
an exit status of 0 instead of 32. This setting defaults to
false.
accept_time_fudge
Unfortunately, due to Windows' unfortunate design decision to
configure the hardware clock to tick localtime, instead of the
more proper and less error-prone UTC time, many users end up
in the situation where the system clock is incorrectly set at
the time when e2fsck is run.
Historically this was usually due to some distributions having
buggy init scripts and/or installers that didn't correctly
detect this case and take appropriate countermeasures.
Unfortunately, this is occasionally true even today, usually
due to a buggy or misconfigured virtualization manager or the
installer not having access to a network time server during
the installation process. So by default, we allow the
superblock times to be fudged by up to 24 hours. This can be
disabled by setting accept_time_fudge to the boolean value of
false. This setting defaults to true.
broken_system_clock
The e2fsck(8) program has some heuristics that assume that the
system clock is correct. In addition, many system programs
make similar assumptions. For example, the UUID library
depends on time not going backwards in order for it to be able
to make its guarantees about issuing universally unique ID's.
Systems with broken system clocks, are well, broken. However,
broken system clocks, particularly in embedded systems, do
exist. E2fsck will attempt to use heuristics to determine if
the time can not be trusted; and to skip time-based checks if
this is true. If this boolean is set to true, then e2fsck
will always assume that the system clock can not be trusted.
buggy_init_scripts
This boolean relation is an alias for accept_time_fudge for
backwards compatibility; it used to be that the behavior
defined by accept_time_fudge above defaulted to false, and
buggy_init_scripts would enable superblock time field to be
wrong by up to 24 hours. When we changed the default, we also
renamed this boolean relation to accept_time_fudge.
clear_test_fs_flag
This boolean relation controls whether or not e2fsck(8) will
offer to clear the test_fs flag if the ext4 filesystem is
available on the system. It defaults to true.
defer_check_on_battery
This boolean relation controls whether or not the interval
between filesystem checks (either based on time or number of
mounts) should be doubled if the system is running on battery.
This setting defaults to true.
indexed_dir_slack_percentage
When e2fsck(8) repacks a indexed directory, reserve the
specified percentage of empty space in each leaf nodes so that
a few new entries can be added to the directory without
splitting leaf nodes, so that the average fill ratio of
directories can be maintained at a higher, more efficient
level. This relation defaults to 20 percent.
log_dir
If the log_filename relation contains a relative pathname,
then the log file will be placed in the directory named by the
log_dir relation.
log_dir_fallback
This relation contains an alternate directory that will be
used if the directory specified by log_dir is not available or
is not writeable.
log_dir_wait
If this boolean relation is true, them if the directories
specified by log_dir or log_dir_fallback are not available or
are not yet writeable, e2fsck will save the output in a memory
buffer, and a child process will periodically test to see if
the log directory has become available after the boot sequence
has mounted the requiste file system for reading/writing.
This implements the functionality provided by logsave(8) for
e2fsck log files.
log_filename
This relation specifies the file name where a copy of e2fsck's
output will be written. If certain problem reports are
suppressed using the max_count_problems relation, (or on a
per-problem basis using the max_count relation), the full set
of problem reports will be written to the log file. The
filename may contain various percent-expressions (%D, %T, %N,
etc.) which will be expanded so that the file name for the log
file can include things like date, time, device name, and
other run-time parameters. See the LOGGING section for more
details.
max_count_problems
This relation specifies the maximum number of problem reports
of a particular type will be printed to stdout before further
problem reports of that type are squelched. This can be
useful if the console is slow (i.e., connected to a serial
port) and so a large amount of output could end up delaying
the boot process for a long time (potentially hours).
no_optimize_extents
Do not offer to optimize the extent tree by eliminating
unnecessary width or depth.
readahead_mem_pct
Use this percentage of memory to try to read in metadata
blocks ahead of the main e2fsck thread. This should reduce
run times, depending on the speed of the underlying storage
and the amount of free memory. There is no default, but see
readahead_kb for more details.
readahead_kb
Use this amount of memory to read in metadata blocks ahead of
the main checking thread. Setting this value to zero disables
readahead entirely. By default, this is set the size of two
block groups' inode tables (typically 4MiB on a regular ext4
filesystem); if this amount is more than 1/50th of total
physical memory, readahead is disabled.
report_features
If this boolean relation is true, e2fsck will print the file
system features as part of its verbose reporting (i.e., if the
-v option is specified)
report_time
If this boolean relation is true, e2fsck will run as if the
options -tt are always specified. This will cause e2fsck to
print timing statistics on a pass by pass basis for full file
system checks.
report_verbose
If this boolean relation is true, e2fsck will run as if the
option -v is always specified. This will cause e2fsck to
print some additional information at the end of each full file
system check.
Each tag in the [problems] stanza names a problem code specified with
a leading "0x" followed by six hex digits. The value of the tag is a
subsection where the relations in that subsection override the
default treatment of that particular problem code.
Note that inappropriate settings in this stanza may cause e2fsck to
behave incorrectly, or even crash. Most system administrators should
not be making changes to this section without referring to source
code.
Within each problem code's subsection, the following tags may be
used:
description
This relation allows the message which is printed when this
filesystem inconsistency is detected to be overridden.
preen_ok
This boolean relation overrides the default behavior
controlling whether this filesystem problem should be
automatically fixed when e2fsck is running in preen mode.
max_count
This integer relation overrides the max_count_problems
parameter (set in the options section) for this particular
problem.
no_ok This boolean relation overrides the default behavior
determining whether or not the filesystem will be marked as
inconsistent if the user declines to fix the reported problem.
no_default
This boolean relation overrides whether the default answer for
this problem (or question) should be "no".
preen_nomessage
This boolean relation overrides the default behavior
controlling whether or not the description for this filesystem
problem should be suppressed when e2fsck is running in preen
mode.
no_nomsg
This boolean relation overrides the default behavior
controlling whether or not the description for this filesystem
problem should be suppressed when a problem forced not to be
fixed, either because e2fsck is run with the -n option or
because the force_no flag has been set for the problem.
force_no
This boolean option, if set to true, forces a problem to never
be fixed. That is, it will be as if the user problem responds
'no' to the question of 'should this problem be fixed?'. The
force_no option even overrides the -y option given on the
command-line (just for the specific problem, of course).
not_a_fix
This boolean option, it set to true, marks the problem as one
where if the user gives permission to make the requested
change, it does not mean that the file system had a problem
which has since been fixed. This is used for requests to
optimize the file system's data structure, such as pruning an
extent tree.
The following relations are defined in the [scratch_files] stanza.
directory
If the directory named by this relation exists and is
writeable, then e2fsck will attempt to use this directory to
store scratch files instead of using in-memory data
structures.
numdirs_threshold
If this relation is set, then in-memory data structures be
used if the number of directories in the filesystem are fewer
than amount specified.
dirinfo
This relation controls whether or not the scratch file
directory is used instead of an in-memory data structure for
directory information. It defaults to true.
icount This relation controls whether or not the scratch file
directory is used instead of an in-memory data structure when
tracking inode counts. It defaults to true.
E2fsck has the facility to save the information from an e2fsck run in
a directory so that a system administrator can review its output at
their leisure. This allows information captured during the automatic
e2fsck preen run, as well as a manually started e2fsck run, to be
saved for posterity. This facility is controlled by the
log_filename, log_dir, log_dir_fallback, and log_dir_wait relations
in the [options] stanza.
The filename in log_filename may contain the following percent-
expressions that will be expanded as follows.
%d The current day of the month
%D The current date; this is a equivalent of %Y%m%d
%h The hostname of the system.
%H The current hour in 24-hour format (00..23)
%m The current month as a two-digit number (01..12)
%M The current minute (00..59)
%N The name of the block device containing the file system, with
any directory pathname stripped off.
%p The pid of the e2fsck process
%s The current time expressed as the number of seconds since
1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC
%S The current second (00..59)
%T The current time; this is equivalent of %H%M%S
%u The name of the user running e2fsck.
%U This percent expression does not expand to anything, but it
signals that any following date or time expressions should be
expressed in UTC time instead of the local timzeone.
%y The last two digits of the current year (00..99)
%Y The current year (i.e., 2012).
The following recipe will prevent e2fsck from aborting during the
boot process when a filesystem contains orphaned files. (Of course,
this is not always a good idea, since critical files that are needed
for the security of the system could potentially end up in
lost+found, and starting the system without first having a system
administrator check things out may be dangerous.)
[problems]
0x040002 = {
preen_ok = true
description = "@u @i %i. "
}
The following recipe will cause an e2fsck logfile to be written to
the directory /var/log/e2fsck, with a filename that contains the
device name, the hostname of the system, the date, and time: e.g.,
"e2fsck-sda3.server.INFO.20120314-112142". If the directory
containing /var/log is located on the root file system which is
initially mounted read-only, then the output will be saved in memory
and written out once the root file system has been remounted
read/write. To avoid too much detail from being written to the
serial console (which could potentially slow down the boot sequence),
only print no more than 16 instances of each type of file system
corruption.
[options]
max_count_problems = 16
log_dir = /var/log/e2fsck
log_filename = e2fsck-%N.%h.INFO.%D-%T
log_dir_wait = true
/etc/e2fsck.conf
The configuration file for e2fsck(8).
e2fsck(8)
This page is part of the e2fsprogs (utilities for ext2/3/4
filesystems) project. Information about the project can be found at
⟨http://e2fsprogs.sourceforge.net/⟩. It is not known how to report
bugs for this man page; if you know, please send a mail to
man-pages@man7.org. This page was obtained from the project's
upstream Git repository
⟨git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/fs/ext2/e2fsprogs.git⟩ on 2017-07-05.
If you discover any rendering problems in this HTML version of the
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send a mail to man-pages@man7.org
E2fsprogs version 1.43.5-WIP February 2017 e2fsck.conf(5)
Pages that refer to this page: e2fsck(8)