Reiserfsck

Latest revision as of 19:58, 2 July 2009

[edit] NAME

reiserfsck - The checking tool for the ReiserFS filesystem.

[edit] SYNOPSIS

  reiserfsck [ -afprVy ]
             [ --rebuild-sb | --check | --fix-fixable | --rebuild-tree | --clean-attributes ]
             [ -j | --journal device ]
             [ -z | --adjust-size ]
             [ -n | --nolog ]
             [ -B | --badblocks file ]
             [ -l | --logfile file ]
             [ -q | --quiet ]
             [ -y | --yes ]
             [ -S | --scan-whole-partition ]
             [ --no-journal-available ] device

[edit] DESCRIPTION

reiserfsck searches for a ReiserFS filesystem on a device, replays any necessary transactions, and either checks or repairs the file system.

device is the special file corresponding to a device or to a partition (e.g /dev/hdXX for an IDE disk partition or /dev/sdXX for a SCSI disk partition).

[edit] OPTIONS

 --rebuild-sb
 This option recovers the superblock on a ReiserFS partition. Normally
 you only need this option if mount reports 
    "read_super_block: can't find a reiserfs file system" 
 and you are sure that a Reiserfs file system is there. But 
 remember that if you have used some partition editor program and now 
 you cannot find a filesystem, probably something has gone wrong while
 repartitioning and the start of the partition has been changed. If so,
 instead of rebuilding the super block on a wrong place you should find
 the correct start of the partition first.

 --check This default action checks filesystem consistency and reports,
 but does not repair any corruption that it finds. This option may be 
 used on a read-only file system mount.

 --fix-fixable This option recovers certain kinds of corruption that do
 not require rebuilding the entire file system tree (--rebuild-tree).
 Normally you only need this option if the --check option reports 
    "corruption that can be fixed with --fix-fixable".
 This includes: zeroing invalid data-block pointers, correcting st_size
 and st_blocks for directories, and deleting invalid directory entries.

 --rebuild-tree
 This option rebuilds the entire filesystem tree using leaf nodes found
 on the device. Normally you only need this option if the 
 reiserfsck --check reports "Running with --rebuild-tree is required".
 You are strongly encouraged to make a backup copy of the whole partition
 before attempting the --rebuild-tree option. Once reiserfsck --rebuild-tree
 is started it must finish its work (and you should not interrupt it), 
 otherwise the filesystem will be left in the unmountable state to avoid
 subsequent data corruptions.

 --clean-attributes
 This option cleans reserved fields of stat-data items. There were days
 when there were no extended attributes in ReiserFS. When they were 
 implemented old partitions needed to be cleaned first -- ReiserFS code
 in the kernel did not care about not used fields in its strutures. Thus
 if you have used one of the old (pre-attrbutes) kernels with a ReiserFS
 filesystem and you want to use extented attribues there, you should clean
 the filesystem first.

 --journal device , -j device
 This option supplies the device name of the current file system journal.
 This option is required when the journal resides on a separate device 
 from the main data device (although it can be avoided with the expert 
 option --no-journal-available).

 --adjust-size, -z
 This option causes reiserfsck to correct file sizes that are larger than
 the offset of the last discovered byte. This implies that holes at the
 end of a file will be removed. File sizes that are smaller than the
 offset of the last discovered byte are corrected by --fix-fixable.

 --badblocks file, -B file
 This option sets the badblock list to be the list of blocks specified 
 in the given 'file'. The filesystem badblock list is cleared before the 
 new list is added. It can be used with --fix-fixable to fix the list of
 badblocks (see debugreiserfs -B). If the device has bad blocks, every 
 time it must be given with the --rebuild-tree option.

 --logfile file, -l file
 This option causes reiserfsck to report any corruption it finds to the
 specified log file rather than to stderr.

 --nolog, -n
 This option prevents reiserfsck from reporting any kinds of corruption.

 --quiet, -q
 This option prevents reiserfsck from reporting its rate of progress.

 --yes, -y
 This option inhibits reiserfsck from asking you for confirmation after
 telling you what it is going to do. It will assuem you confirm. For 
 safety, it does not work with the --rebuild-tree option.

 -a, -p
 These options are usually passed by fsck -A during the automatic checking
 of those partitions listed in /etc/fstab. These options cause reiserfsck
 to print some information about the specified filesystem, to check if 
 error flags in the superblock are set and to do some light-weight checks.
 If these checks reveal a corruption or the flag indicating a (possibly 
 fixable) corruption is found set in the superblock, then reiserfsck 
 switches to the fix-fixable mode. If the flag indicating a fatal 
 corruption is found set in the superblock, then reiserfsck finishes with an error.

 -V This option prints the reiserfsprogs version and then exit.

 -r, -f These options are not yet operational and therefore are ignored.

[edit] EXPERT OPTIONS

DO NOT USE THESE OPTIONS UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING! WE ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE IF YOU LOSE DATA AS A RESULT OF THESE OPTIONS!

 --no-journal-available
 This option allows reiserfsck to proceed when the journal device is not 
 available. This option has no effect when the journal is located on the 
 main data device.
 NOTE: after this operation you must use reiserfstune  to specify a 
 new journal device.

 --scan-whole-partition, -S
 This option causes --rebuild-tree to scan the whole partition but not 
 only the used space on the partition.

[edit] EXAMPLES

1. You think something may be wrong with a reiserfs partition on /dev/hda1 or you would just like to perform a periodic disk check.
2. Run reiserfsck --check --logfile check.log /dev/hda1. If reiserfsck --check exits with status 0 it means no errors were discovered.
3. If reiserfsck --check exits with status 1 (and reports about fixable corruptions) it means that you should run reiserfsck --fix-fixable --logfile fixable.log /dev/hda1.
4. If reiserfsck --check exits with status 2 (and reports about fatal corruptions) it means that you need to run reiserfsck --rebuild-tree. If reiserfsck --check fails in some way you should also run reiserfsck --rebuild-tree, but we also encourage you to submit this as a bug report.
5. Before running reiserfsck --rebuild-tree, please make a backup of the whole partition before proceeding. Then run reiserfsck --rebuild-tree --logfile rebuild.log /dev/hda1.
6. If the reiserfsck --rebuild-tree step fails or does not recover what you expected, please submit this as a bug report. Try to provide as much information as possible including your platform and Linux kernel version. We will try to help solve the problem.

[edit] EXIT CODES

reiserfsck uses the following exit codes:

• 0 - No errors.
• 1 - File system errors corrected.
• 2 - Reboot is needed.
• 4 - File system fatal errors left uncorrected, reiserfsck --rebuild-tree needs to be launched.
• 6 - File system fixable errors left uncorrected, reiserfsck --fix-fixable needs to be launched.
• 8 - Operational error.
• 16 - Usage or syntax error.

[edit] AUTHOR

This version of reiserfsck has been written by Vitaly Fertman.

[edit] BUGS

Please report bugs to the ReiserFS developers <reiserfs-devel@vger.kernel.org>, providing as much information as possible - your hardware, kernel, patches, settings, all printed messages, the logfile; check the syslog file for any related information.

[edit] TODO

Faster recovering, signal handling.

[edit] SEE ALSO

• mkreiserfs(8)
• reiserfstune(8)
• resize_reiserfs(8)
• debugreiserfs(8)