Fsck - The UNIX** File System Check Program

Marshall Kirk McKusick

Computer Systems Research Group
Computer Science Division
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720

T. J. Kowalski

Bell Laboratories
Murray Hill, New Jersey 07974

ABSTRACT

This document reflects the use of fsck with the 4.2BSD and 4.3BSD file system organization. This is a revision of the original paper written by T. J. Kowalski.

      File System Check Program (fsck) is an interactive file system check and repair program. Fsck uses the redundant structural information in the UNIX file system to perform several consistency checks. If an inconsistency is detected, it is reported to the operator, who may elect to fix or ignore each inconsistency. These inconsistencies result from the permanent interruption of the file system updates, which are performed every time a file is modified. Unless there has been a hardware failure, fsck is able to repair corrupted file systems using procedures based upon the order in which UNIX honors these file system update requests.

      The purpose of this document is to describe the normal updating of the file system, to discuss the possible causes of file system corruption, and to present the corrective actions implemented by fsck. Both the program and the interaction between the program and the operator are described.

Revised October 7, 1996

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1.  Introduction

2.  Overview of the file system
2.1.    Superblock
2.2.    Summary Information
2.3.    Cylinder groups
2.4.    Fragments
2.5.    Updates to the file system

3.  Fixing corrupted file systems
3.1.    Detecting and correcting corruption
3.2.    Super block checking
3.3.    Free block checking
3.4.    Checking the inode state
3.5.    Inode links
3.6.    Inode data size
3.7.    Checking the data associated with an inode
3.8.    File system connectivity

Acknowledgements

References

4.  Appendix A
4.1.     Conventions
4.2.     Initialization
4.3.     Phase 1 - Check Blocks and Sizes
4.4.     Phase 1b - Rescan for more Dups
4.5.     Phase 2 - Check Pathnames
4.6.     Phase 3 - Check Connectivity
4.7.     Phase 4 - Check Reference Counts
4.8.     Phase 5 - Check Cyl groups
4.9.     Cleanup

Table of Contents

• 1. Introduction
• 2. Overview of the file system
  • 2.1. Superblock
  • 2.2. Summary information
  • 2.3. Cylinder groups
  • 2.4. Fragments
  • 2.5. Updates to the file system
• 3. Fixing corrupted file systems
  • 3.1. Detecting and correcting corruption
  • 3.2. Super-block checking
  • 3.3. Free block checking
  • 3.4. Checking the inode state
  • 3.5. Inode links
  • 3.6. Inode data size
  • 3.7. Checking the data associated with an inode
  • 3.8. File system connectivity
• 4. Appendix A - Fsck Error Conditions
  • 4.1. Conventions
  • 4.2. Initialization
  • 4.3. Phase 1 - Check Blocks and Sizes
  • 4.4. Phase 1B: Rescan for More Dups
  • 4.5. Phase 2 - Check Pathnames
  • 4.6. Phase 3 - Check Connectivity
  • 4.7. Phase 4 - Check Reference Counts
  • 4.8. Phase 5 - Check Cyl groups
  • 4.9. Cleanup
• Footnotes