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EXT4(5)                       File Formats Manual                      EXT4(5)

NAME
       ext2 - the second extended file system
       ext3 - the third extended file system
       ext4 - the fourth extended file system
DESCRIPTION
       The second, third, and fourth extended file systems, or ext2, ext3, and
       ext4 as they are commonly known, are Linux file systems that have  his-
       torically  been  the  default file system for many Linux distributions.
       They are general purpose file  systems  that  have  been  designed  for
       extensibility and backwards compatibility.  In particular, file systems
       previously intended for use with the ext2 and ext3 file systems can  be
       mounted  using  the  ext4 file system driver, and indeed in many modern
       Linux distributions, the ext4 file system driver  has  been  configured
       handle mount requests for ext2 and ext3 file systems.
FILE SYSTEM FEATURES
       A file system formated for ext2, ext3, or ext4 can be have some collec-
       tion of the follow file system feature flags enabled.   Some  of  these
       features  are  not  supported by all implementations of the ext2, ext3,
       and ext4 file system drivers, depending on Linux kernel version in use.
       On  other  operating  systems,  such as the GNU/HURD or FreeBSD, only a
       very restrictive set of file system features may be supported in  their
       implementations of ext2.
                   64bit
                          Enables  the  file  system  to  be  larger than 2^32
                          blocks.   This  feature  is  set  automatically,  as
                          needed, but it can be useful to specify this feature
                          explicitly if the  file  system  might  need  to  be
                          resized  larger  than  2^32  blocks,  even if it was
                          smaller than that threshold when it  was  originally
                          created.   Note  that  some  older kernels and older
                          versions of e2fsprogs will not support file  systems
                          with this ext4 feature enabled.
                   bigalloc
                          This  ext4  feature  enables clustered block alloca-
                          tion, so that the unit of allocation is a  power  of
                          two number of blocks.  That is, each bit in the what
                          had traditionally been known as the block allocation
                          bitmap  now indicates whether a cluster is in use or
                          not, where a cluster is by default  composed  of  16
                          blocks.  This feature can decrease the time spent on
                          doing block allocation and brings smaller fragmenta-
                          tion,  especially  for large files.  The size can be
                          specified using the -C option.
                          Warning: The bigalloc feature is still under  devel-
                          opment,  and  may  not  be fully supported with your
                          kernel or may have various bugs.  Please see the web
                          page  http://ext4.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Bigalloc
                          for details.  May clash with delayed allocation (see
                          nodelallocmountoption).
                          This  feature  requires  that the extent features be
                          enabled.
                   dir_index
                          Use hashed b-trees to speed up name lookups in large
                          directories.   This feature is supported by ext3 and
                          ext4 file systems, and is ignored by ext2 file  sys-
                          tems.
                   dir_nlink
                          Normally  ext4  allows an inode to have no more than
                          65,000 hard links.  This applies to files as well as
                          directories,  which  means that there can be no more
                          than 64,998 subdirectories in a  directory  (because
                          each  of  the  '..'  entries counts as a hard link).
                          This feature lifts this limit by causing ext4 to use
                          a  links  count  of 1 to indicate that the number of
                          hard links to a directory is not known.
                   extent
                          This ext4 feature  allows  the  mapping  of  logical
                          block  numbers  for  a  particular inode to physical
                          blocks on the storage device to be stored  using  an
                          extent  tree,  which is a more efficient data struc-
                          ture than the traditional indirect block scheme used
                          by  the  ext2 and ext3 file systems.  The use of the
                          extent  tree  decreases  metadata  block   overhead,
                          improves  file system performance, and decreases the
                          needed to run e2fsck(8) on the file system.   (Note:
                          both  extent and extents are accepted as valid names
                          for this feature for  historical/backwards  compati-
                          bility reasons.)
                   extra_isize
                          This  ext4  feature  reserves  a  specific amount of
                          space in each inode for extended  metadata  such  as
                          nanosecond  timestamps  and file creation time, even
                          if the current  kernel  does  not  current  need  to
                          reserve  this much space.  Without this feature, the
                          kernel will reserve the amount of space for features
                          currently  it  currently  needs, and the rest may be
                          consumed by extended attributes.
                          For this feature to be useful the inode size must be
                          256 bytes in size or larger.
                   ext_attr
                          This feature enables the use of extended attributes.
                          This feature is supported by ext2, ext3, and ext4.
                   filetype
                          This feature enables the storage file type  informa-
                          tion  in  directory  entries.   This feature is sup-
                          ported by ext2, ext3, and ext4.

                   flex_bg
                          This ext4 feature allows the per-
                          block  group metadata (allocation
                          bitmaps and inode tables)  to  be
                          placed  anywhere  on  the storage
                          media.  In addition, mke2fs  will
                          place  the  per-block group meta-
                          data  together  starting  at  the
                          first   block   group   of   each
                          "flex_bg group".    The  size  of
                          the  flex_bg  group can be speci-
                          fied using the -G option.
                   has_journal
                          Create  a   journal   to   ensure
                          filesystem    consistency    even
                          across unclean  shutdowns.   Set-
                          ting  the  filesystem  feature is
                          equivalent  to   using   the   -j
                          option.   This  feature  is  sup-
                          ported  by  ext3  and  ext4,  and
                          ignored  by  the ext2 file system
                          driver.
                   huge_file
                          This ext4 feature allows files to
                          be  larger  than  2  terabytes in
                          size.
                   journal_dev
                          This feature is  enabled  on  the
                          superblock  found  on an external
                          journal device.  The  block  size
                          for  the external journal must be
                          the same as the file system which
                          uses it.
                          The  external  journal device can
                          be used by a file system by spec-
                          ifying  the  -J device=<external-
                          device> option  to  mke2fs(8)  or
                          tune2fs(8).
                   large_file
                          This feature flag is set automat-
                          ically by modern kernels  when  a
                          file  larger  than 2 gigabytes is
                          created.  Very old kernels  could
                          not  handle  large files, so this
                          feature flag was used to prohibit
                          those  kernels from mounting file
                          systems  that  they   could   not
                          understand.
                   meta_bg
                          This  ext4  feature  allows  file
                          systems  to  be  resized  on-line
                          without   explicitly  needing  to
                          reserve space for growth  in  the
                          size  of the block group descrip-
                          tors.  This scheme is  also  used
                          to  resize file systems which are
                          larger than 2^32 blocks.   It  is
                          not recommended that this feature
                          be set when a file system is cre-
                          ated, since this alternate method
                          of  storing   the   block   group
                          descriptor  will  slow  down  the
                          time needed  to  mount  the  file
                          system,  and  newer  kernels  can
                          automatically set this feature as
                          necessary  when  doing  an online
                          resize and no more reserved space
                          is available in the resize inode.
                   mmp
                          This ext4 feature provides multi-
                          ple mount protection (MMP).   MMP
                          helps  to  protect the filesystem
                          from being multiply  mounted  and
                          is useful in shared storage envi-
                          ronments.
                   resize_inode
                          This file  system  feature  indi-
                          cates   that   space   has   been
                          reserved  so  the   block   group
                          descriptor  table can be extended
                          by the  file  system  is  resized
                          while the file system is mounted.
                          The online  resize  operation  is
                          carried  out by the kernel, trig-
                          gered,   by   resize2fs(8).    By
                          default  mke2fs  will  attempt to
                          reserve enough space so that  the
                          filesystem may grow to 1024 times
                          its initial size.   This  can  be
                          changed using the resize extended
                          option.
                          This feature  requires  that  the
                          sparse_super feature be enabled.
                   sparse_super
                          This  file  system feature is set
                          on all  modern  ext2,  ext3,  and
                          ext4  file  system.  It indicates
                          that   backup   copies   of   the
                          superblock    and   block   group
                          descriptors be present only on  a
                          few  block groups, and not all of
                          them.
                   uninit_bg
                          This  ext4  file  system  feature
                          indicates  that  the  block group
                          descriptors  will  be   protected
                          using  checksums,  making it safe
                          for mke2fs(8) to  create  a  file
                          system  without  initializing all
                          of the block groups.  The  kernel
                          will  keep  a  high  watermark of
                          unused  inodes,  and   initialize
                          inode  tables  and  block lazily.
                          This feature speeds up  the  time
                          to  check  the  file system using
                          e2fsck(8), and it also speeds  up
                          the  time  required for mke2fs(8)
                          to create the file system.
MOUNT OPTIONS
       This section describes mount options which are  spe-
       cific  to ext2, ext3, and ext4.  Other generic mount
       options may  be  used  as  well;  see  mount(8)  for
       details.
Mount options for ext2
       The `ext2' filesystem is the standard Linux filesys-
       tem.  Since Linux 2.5.46, for most mount options the
       default  is determined by the filesystem superblock.
       Set them with tune2fs(8).
       acl|noacl
              Support POSIX Access Control Lists (or not).
       bsddf|minixdf
              Set the behavior for the statfs system  call.
              The  minixdf  behavior  is  to  return in the
              f_blocks field the total number of blocks  of
              the  filesystem,  while  the  bsddf  behavior
              (which is the default)  is  to  subtract  the
              overhead  blocks  used by the ext2 filesystem
              and not available for file storage. Thus
              % mount /k -o minixdf; df /k; umount /k
              Filesystem  1024-blocks   Used  Available  Capacity  Mounted on
              /dev/sda6     2630655    86954   2412169      3%     /k
              % mount /k -o bsddf; df /k; umount /k
              Filesystem  1024-blocks  Used  Available  Capacity  Mounted on
              /dev/sda6     2543714      13   2412169      0%     /k
              (Note that this example shows  that  one  can
              add command line options to the options given
              in /etc/fstab.)
       check=none or nocheck
              No checking is done at mount  time.  This  is
              the  default.  This  is  fast.  It is wise to
              invoke e2fsck(8) every now and then, e.g.  at
              boot time. The non-default behavior is unsup-
              ported (check=normal and check=strict options
              have  been  removed).  Note  that these mount
              options don't have to be  supported  if  ext4
              kernel  driver  is  used  for  ext2  and ext3
              filesystems.
       debug  Print debugging info upon each (re)mount.
       errors={continue|remount-ro|panic}
              Define the behavior when an error is  encoun-
              tered.   (Either  ignore errors and just mark
              the filesystem  erroneous  and  continue,  or
              remount  the  filesystem  read-only, or panic
              and halt the system.)  The default is set  in
              the filesystem superblock, and can be changed
              using tune2fs(8).
       grpid|bsdgroups and nogrpid|sysvgroups
              These options define what group  id  a  newly
              created  file  gets.   When  grpid is set, it
              takes the group id of the directory in  which
              it  is  created;  otherwise  (the default) it
              takes  the  fsgid  of  the  current  process,
              unless  the directory has the setgid bit set,
              in which case it takes the gid from the  par-
              ent  directory,  and also gets the setgid bit
              set if it is a directory itself.
       grpquota|noquota|quota|usrquota
              The usrquota (same  as  quota)  mount  option
              enables user quota support on the filesystem.
              grpquota enables group  quotas  support.  You
              need  the  quota utilities to actually enable
              and manage the quota system.
       nouid32
              Disables 32-bit UIDs and GIDs.  This  is  for
              interoperability  with  older  kernels  which
              only store and expect 16-bit values.
       oldalloc or orlov
              Use old allocator or Orlov allocator for  new
              inodes. Orlov is default.
       resgid=n and resuid=n
              The  ext2  filesystem reserves a certain per-
              centage of the available  space  (by  default
              5%,  see  mke2fs(8)  and  tune2fs(8)).  These
              options determine who can  use  the  reserved
              blocks.   (Roughly: whoever has the specified
              uid, or belongs to the specified group.)
       sb=n   Instead  of  block  1,   use   block   n   as
              superblock.  This  could  be  useful when the
              filesystem  has  been   damaged.    (Earlier,
              copies  of the superblock would be made every
              8192 blocks: in block  1,  8193,  16385,  ...
              (and  one  got  thousands  of copies on a big
              filesystem). Since version 1.08, mke2fs has a
              -s  (sparse  superblock) option to reduce the
              number of backup superblocks, and since  ver-
              sion 1.15 this is the default. Note that this
              may mean that ext2 filesystems created  by  a
              recent  mke2fs  cannot  be  mounted r/w under
              Linux 2.0.*.)  The block number here uses 1 k
              units. Thus, if you want to use logical block
              32768 on a filesystem with  4 k  blocks,  use
              "sb=131072".
       user_xattr|nouser_xattr
              Support "user." extended attributes (or not).

Mount options for ext3
       The  ext3  filesystem  is  a  version  of  the  ext2
       filesystem which has been enhanced with  journaling.
       It  supports the same options as ext2 as well as the
       following additions:
       journal=update
              Update the ext3 filesystem's journal  to  the
              current format.
       journal=inum
              When a journal already exists, this option is
              ignored. Otherwise, it specifies  the  number
              of  the  inode  which will represent the ext3
              filesystem's journal file; ext3 will create a
              new  journal, overwriting the old contents of
              the file whose inode number is inum.
       journal_dev=devnum/journal_path=path
              When   the    external    journal    device's
              major/minor   numbers   have  changed,  these
              options allow the user  to  specify  the  new
              journal  location.   The  journal  device  is
              identified either through its new major/minor
              numbers  encoded  in devnum, or via a path to
              the device.
       norecovery/noload
              Don't load the  journal  on  mounting.   Note
              that  if  the  filesystem  was  not unmounted
              cleanly, skipping  the  journal  replay  will
              lead  to  the filesystem containing inconsis-
              tencies that can lead to any number of  prob-
              lems.
       data={journal|ordered|writeback}
              Specifies  the journaling mode for file data.
              Metadata is always journaled.  To  use  modes
              other  than  ordered  on the root filesystem,
              pass the mode to the kernel as  boot  parame-
              ter, e.g. rootflags=data=journal.
              journal
                     All data is committed into the journal
                     prior to being written into  the  main
                     filesystem.
              ordered
                     This is the default mode.  All data is
                     forced directly out to the  main  file
                     system  prior  to  its  metadata being
                     committed to the journal.
              writeback
                     Data ordering is not preserved -  data
                     may  be written into the main filesys-
                     tem after its metadata has  been  com-
                     mitted   to   the  journal.   This  is
                     rumoured to be the  highest-throughput
                     option.     It   guarantees   internal
                     filesystem integrity, however  it  can
                     allow  old  data  to  appear  in files
                     after a crash and journal recovery.
       data_err=ignore
              Just print  an  error  message  if  an  error
              occurs in a file data buffer in ordered mode.
       data_err=abort
              Abort  the  journal  if  an error occurs in a
              file data buffer in ordered mode.
       barrier=0 / barrier=1
              This disables / enables the use of write bar-
              riers  in  the jbd code.  barrier=0 disables,
              barrier=1  enables   (default).   This   also
              requires an IO stack which can support barri-
              ers, and if jbd gets an error  on  a  barrier
              write,  it will disable barriers again with a
              warning.  Write barriers enforce  proper  on-
              disk  ordering  of  journal  commits,  making
              volatile disk write caches safe  to  use,  at
              some  performance penalty.  If your disks are
              battery-backed in one way  or  another,  dis-
              abling  barriers  may  safely improve perfor-
              mance.
       commit=nrsec
              Sync all data and metadata every  nrsec  sec-
              onds.  The  default  value is 5 seconds. Zero
              means default.
       user_xattr
              Enable  Extended  User  Attributes.  See  the
              attr(5) manual page.
       acl    Enable  POSIX  Access  Control Lists. See the
              acl(5) manual page.
       usr-
       jquota=aquota.user|grpjquota=aquota.group|jqfmt=vfsv0
              Apart from the old quota system (as in  ext2,
              jqfmt=vfsold  aka  version 1 quota) ext3 also
              supports journaled quotas (version 2  quota).
              jqfmt=vfsv0  enables  journaled  quotas.  For
              journaled  quotas  the  mount  options   usr-
              jquota=aquota.user and grpjquota=aquota.group
              are required to tell the quota  system  which
              quota database files to use. Journaled quotas
              have the advantage that even after a crash no
              quota check is required.

Mount options for ext4
       The ext4 filesystem is an advanced level of the ext3
       filesystem which incorporates scalability and relia-
       bility enhancements for supporting large filesystem.
       The  options  journal_dev, norecovery, noload, data,
       commit,  orlov,  oldalloc,  [no]user_xattr  [no]acl,
       bsddf, minixdf, debug, errors, data_err, grpid, bsd-
       groups,  nogrpid  sysvgroups,  resgid,  resuid,  sb,
       quota,   noquota,   grpquota,   usrquota  usrjquota,
       grpjquota and jqfmt are backwardly  compatible  with
       ext3 or ext2.
       journal_checksum
              Enable  checksumming  of the journal transac-
              tions.  This will allow the recovery code  in
              e2fsck and the kernel to detect corruption in
              the kernel.  It is a  compatible  change  and
              will be ignored by older kernels.
       journal_async_commit
              Commit  block  can be written to disk without
              waiting for  descriptor  blocks.  If  enabled
              older  kernels cannot mount the device.  This
              will enable 'journal_checksum' internally.
       barrier=0 / barrier=1 / barrier / nobarrier
              These mount options have the same  effect  as
              in  ext3.   The  mount  options "barrier" and
              "nobarrier" are added  for  consistency  with
              other ext4 mount options.
              The ext4 filesystem enables write barriers by
              default.
       inode_readahead_blks=n
              This tuning parameter  controls  the  maximum
              number  of  inode  table  blocks  that ext4's
              inode table readahead algorithm will pre-read
              into  the  buffer cache.  The value must be a
              power of 2. The default value is 32 blocks.
       stripe=n
              Number of filesystem blocks that mballoc will
              try to use for allocation size and alignment.
              For RAID5/6 systems this should be the number
              of data disks * RAID chunk size in filesystem
              blocks.
       delalloc
              Deferring block  allocation  until  write-out
              time.
       nodelalloc
              Disable  delayed allocation. Blocks are allo-
              cated when data is copied from user  to  page
              cache.
       max_batch_time=usec
              Maximum  amount  of time ext4 should wait for
              additional filesystem operations to be  batch
              together  with a synchronous write operation.
              Since a synchronous write operation is  going
              to force a commit and then a wait for the I/O
              complete, it doesn't cost much, and can be  a
              huge  throughput  win,  we  wait  for a small
              amount of time to see if any  other  transac-
              tions can piggyback on the synchronous write.
              The algorithm used is designed  to  automati-
              cally tune for the speed of the disk, by mea-
              suring the amount of time (on  average)  that
              it  takes to finish committing a transaction.
              Call this time the  "commit  time".   If  the
              time that the transaction has been running is
              less than the  commit  time,  ext4  will  try
              sleeping  for the commit time to see if other
              operations will  join  the  transaction.  The
              commit  time is capped by the max_batch_time,
              which  defaults  to  15000 us  (15 ms).  This
              optimization  can  be  turned off entirely by
              setting max_batch_time to 0.
       min_batch_time=usec
              This  parameter  sets  the  commit  time  (as
              described    above)    to    be    at   least
              min_batch_time. It defaults to zero microsec-
              onds.  Increasing  this parameter may improve
              the throughput of multi-threaded, synchronous
              workloads  on very fast disks, at the cost of
              increasing latency.
       journal_ioprio=prio
              The I/O priority (from 0 to 7, where 0 is the
              highest  priority)  which  should be used for
              I/O operations submitted by kjournald2 during
              a  commit  operation.   This  defaults  to 3,
              which is a slightly higher priority than  the
              default I/O priority.
       abort  Simulate  the effects of calling ext4_abort()
              for debugging  purposes.   This  is  normally
              used  while  remounting a filesystem which is
              already mounted.
       auto_da_alloc|noauto_da_alloc
              Many broken applications  don't  use  fsync()
              when  replacing  existing  files via patterns
              such as
              fd = open("foo.new")/write(fd,...)/close(fd)/
              rename("foo.new", "foo")
              or worse yet
              fd                =               open("foo",
              O_TRUNC)/write(fd,...)/close(fd).
              If auto_da_alloc is enabled, ext4 will detect
              the  replace-via-rename and replace-via-trun-
              cate patterns  and  force  that  any  delayed
              allocation  blocks are allocated such that at
              the  next  journal  commit,  in  the  default
              data=ordered mode, the data blocks of the new
              file are forced to disk before  the  rename()
              operation   is   committed.    This  provides
              roughly the same level of guarantees as ext3,
              and avoids the "zero-length" problem that can
              happen  when  a  system  crashes  before  the
              delayed allocation blocks are forced to disk.
       noinit_itable
              Do not initialize any uninitialized inode ta-
              ble blocks in the  background.  This  feature
              may  be used by installation CD's so that the
              install process can complete  as  quickly  as
              possible;   the  inode  table  initialization
              process would then be deferred until the next
              time the filesystem is mounted.
       init_itable=n
              The  lazy  itable init code will wait n times
              the number of milliseconds it  took  to  zero
              out  the  previous block group's inode table.
              This minimizes the impact on  system  perfor-
              mance  while  the filesystem's inode table is
              being initialized.
       discard/nodiscard
              Controls  whether  ext4  should  issue   dis-
              card/TRIM  commands  to  the underlying block
              device when blocks are freed.  This is useful
              for SSD devices and sparse/thinly-provisioned
              LUNs, but it is off by default  until  suffi-
              cient testing has been done.
       nouid32
              Disables  32-bit  UIDs and GIDs.  This is for
              interoperability  with  older  kernels  which
              only store and expect 16-bit values.
       block_validity/noblock_validity
              This  options  allows to enables/disables the
              in-kernel facility  for  tracking  filesystem
              metadata  blocks  within internal data struc-
              tures. This allows multi-block allocator  and
              other  routines  to  quickly  locate  extents
              which might overlap with filesystem  metadata
              blocks. This option is intended for debugging
              purposes and since it negatively affects  the
              performance, it is off by default.
       dioread_lock/dioread_nolock
              Controls  whether  or not ext4 should use the
              DIO  read  locking.  If  the   dioread_nolock
              option is specified ext4 will allocate unini-
              tialized extent before buffer write and  con-
              vert  the extent to initialized after IO com-
              pletes.  This approach allows  ext4  code  to
              avoid using inode mutex, which improves scal-
              ability on high speed storages. However  this
              does   not  work  with  data  journaling  and
              dioread_nolock option will  be  ignored  with
              kernel  warning.   Note  that  dioread_nolock
              code  path  is  only  used  for  extent-based
              files.   Because  of  the  restrictions  this
              options comprises it is off by default  (e.g.
              dioread_lock).
       max_dir_size_kb=n
              This  limits  the  size of the directories so
              that any attempt to expand  them  beyond  the
              specified  limit  in  kilobytes will cause an
              ENOSPC error. This is useful  in  memory-con-
              strained  environments,  where  a  very large
              directory can cause severe performance  prob-
              lems  or  even  provoke  the  Out  Of  Memory
              killer. (For example, if there is only 512 MB
              memory  available,  a  176 MB  directory  may
              seriously cramp the system's style.)
       i_version
              Enable 64-bit  inode  version  support.  This
              option is off by default.

FILE ATTRIBUTES
       The ext2, ext3, and ext4 filesystems support setting
       the following file attributes on Linux systems using
       the chattr(1) utility:
       a - append only
       A - no atime updates
       d - no dump
       D - synchronous directory updates
       i - immutable
       S - synchronous updates
       u - undeletable
       In  addition,  the ext3 and ext4 filesystems support
       the following flag:
       j - data journaling
       Finally, the ext4 filesystem also supports the  fol-
       lowing flag:
       e - extents format
       For  descriptions  of  these attribute flags, please
       refer to the chattr(1) man page.
SEE ALSO
       mke2fs(8), mke2fs.conf(5),  e2fsck(8),  dumpe2fs(8),
       tune2fs(8), debugfs(8), mount(8), chattr(1)

E2fsprogs version 1.42.9         December 2013                         EXT4(5)