e2fsprogs (sometimes called the e2fs programs) is a set of utilities for maintaining the

ext2 The ext2 or second extended file system is a file system for the Linux kernel. It was initially designed by French software developer Rémy Card as a replacement for the extended file system (ext). Having been designed according to the same pr ...

ext3 ext3, or third extended filesystem, is a journaled file system that is commonly used by the Linux kernel. It used to be the default file system for many popular Linux distributions. Stephen Tweedie first revealed that he was working on ext ...

and

ext4 ext4 (fourth extended filesystem) is a journaling file system for Linux, developed as the successor to ext3. ext4 was initially a series of backward-compatible extensions to ext3, many of them originally developed by Cluster File Systems for ...

file system In computing, file system or filesystem (often abbreviated to fs) is a method and data structure that the operating system uses to control how data is stored and retrieved. Without a file system, data placed in a storage medium would be one larg ...

s. Since those file systems are often the default for

Linux distribution A Linux distribution (often abbreviated as distro) is an operating system made from a software collection that includes the Linux kernel and, often, a package management system. Linux users usually obtain their operating system by downloading one ...

s, it is commonly considered to be essential software.

List of utilities

Included with e2fsprogs, ordered by

ASCIIbetical order ASCII ( ), abbreviated from American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for electronic communication. ASCII codes represent text in computers, telecommunications equipment, and other devices. Because of ...

, are: ;

badblocks 

badblocks is a Linux utility to check for bad sectors on a disk drive. It can create a text file with list of these sectors that can be used with other programs, like mkfs, so that they are not used in the future and thus do not cause corruption o ...

: search a device for bad blocks ;blkid : locate/print block device attributes ;

chattr 


 is the command in Linux that allows a user to set certain attributes of a file.  is the command that displays the attributes of a file.

Most  BSD-like systems, including macOS, have always had an analogous  command to set the attributes, but no ...

: change file attributes on a Linux file system ;debugfs : used to manually view or modify internal structures of the file system ;dumpe2fs : which prints superblock and block group information. ;e2freefrag : report free space fragmentation information ;e2fsck : an

fsck The system utility fsck (''file system consistency check'') is a tool for checking the consistency of a file system in Unix and Unix-like operating systems, such as Linux, macOS, and FreeBSD. A similar command, CHKDSK, exists in Microsoft Windows ...

program that checks for and corrects inconsistencies ;e2image : save critical ext2/ext3/ext4 filesystem metadata to a file ;e2label : change the label on an ext2/ext3/ext4 filesystem ;e2undo : replay an undo log for an ext2/ext3/ext4 filesystem ;e4defrag : online defragmenter for ext4 filesystem ;filefrag : report on file fragmentation ;findfs : find a filesystem by label or UUID ;findsuper : quick hacked up program to find ext2 superblocks ;logsave : save the output of a command in a logfile ;lsattr : list file attributes on a Linux second extended file system ;mke2fs : used for creating ext2, ext3 and ext4 file systems ;resize2fs : which can expand and shrink ext2, ext3 and

file systems. On-line support was added in 2006. ;tune2fs : used to modify file system parameters Many of these utilities are based on the libext2fs library.

Usage

Despite what its name might suggest, e2fsprogs works not only with ext2, but also with ext3 and ext4. Although ext3's journaling capability can reduce the need to use e2fsck, it is sometimes still necessary to help protect against kernel bugs or bad hardware. E2fsck-uninit

With ext4 the e2fsck runtime should come down considerably, as can be seen from the graph. As the

userspace A modern computer operating system usually segregates virtual memory into user space and kernel space. Primarily, this separation serves to provide memory protection and hardware protection from malicious or errant software behaviour. Kernel ...

companion for the ext2, ext3, and ext4 drivers in the

Linux kernel The Linux kernel is a free and open-source, monolithic, modular, multitasking, Unix-like operating system kernel. It was originally authored in 1991 by Linus Torvalds for his i386-based PC, and it was soon adopted as the kernel for the GNU ope ...

, the e2fsprogs are most commonly used with

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

. However, they have been ported to other systems, such as

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free and open-source Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), which was based on Research Unix. The first version of FreeBSD was released in 1993. In 2005, FreeBSD was the most popular ...

and Darwin.

References

External links

* {{sourceforge, e2fsprogs
e2fsprogs git repository

Free software programmed in C Linux file system-related software Unix file system-related software

List of utilities

Usage

See also

References

External links