1 .\" Copyright 1992, 1993, 1994 Rickard E. Faith (faith@cs.unc.edu)
2 .\" May be freely distributed.
4 .TH FSCK 8 "2 July 1996" "Util-Linux 2.6" "Linux Programmer's Manual"
6 fsck.minix \- a file system consistency checker for Linux
13 performs a consistency check for the Linux MINIX filesystem. The current
14 version supports the 14 character and 30 character filename options.
17 assumes the file system is quiescent.
19 should not be used on a mounted device unless you can be sure nobody is
20 writing to it (and remember that the kernel can write to it when it
23 The device will usually have the following form:
26 /dev/hda[1-63] (IDE disk 1)
27 /dev/hdb[1-63] (IDE disk 2)
28 /dev/sda[1-15] (SCSI disk 1)
29 /dev/sdb[1-15] (SCSI disk 2)
33 If the file system was changed (i.e., repaired), then
35 will print "FILE SYSTEM HAS CHANGED" and will
37 three times before exiting. Since Linux does not currently have raw
40 need to reboot at this time.
45 be used on a mounted filesystem. Using
47 on a mounted filesystem is very dangerous, due to the possibility that
48 deleted files are still in use, and can seriously damage a perfectly good
49 filesystem! If you absolutely have to run
51 on a mounted filesystem (i.e., the root filesystem), make sure nothing is
52 writing to the disk, and that no files are "zombies" waiting for deletion.
59 Performs interactive repairs
62 Performs automatic repairs (this option implies
64 and serves to answer all of the questions asked with the default. Note
65 that this can be extremely dangerous in the case of extensive file system
72 Outputs super-block information
75 Activates MINIX-like "mode not cleared" warnings
78 Force file system check even if the file system was marked as valid (this
79 marking is done by the kernel when the file system is unmounted).
92 There are numerous diagnostic messages. The ones mentioned here are the
93 most commonly seen in normal usage.
95 If the device does not exist,
97 will print "unable to read super block". If the device exists, but is not
100 will print "bad magic number in super-block".
102 The exit code returned by
104 is the sum of the following:
108 File system errors corrected, system should be rebooted if file system was
111 File system errors left uncorrected
115 Usage or syntax error
117 In point of fact, only 0, 3, 4, 7, 8, and 16 can ever be returned.
119 Linus Torvalds (torvalds@cs.helsinki.fi)
121 Error code values by Rik Faith (faith@cs.unc.edu)
123 Added support for file system valid flag: Dr. Wettstein
124 (greg%wind.uucp@plains.nodak.edu)
126 Check to prevent fsck of mounted filesystem added by Daniel Quinlan
127 (quinlan@yggdrasil.com)
129 Minix v2 fs support by Andreas Schwab
130 (schwab@issan.informatik.uni-dortmund.de), updated by Nicolai
131 Langfeldt (janl@math.uio.no)
133 Portability patch by Russell King (rmk@ecs.soton.ac.uk).
135 The fsck.minix command is part of the util-linux-ng package and is available from
136 ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux-ng/.