+.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
-Ext4 Filesystem
-===============
+========================
+General Information
+========================
Ext4 is an advanced level of the ext3 filesystem which incorporates
scalability and reliability enhancements for supporting large filesystems
Web site: http://ext4.wiki.kernel.org
-1. Quick usage instructions:
-===========================
+Quick usage instructions
+========================
Note: More extensive information for getting started with ext4 can be
- found at the ext4 wiki site at the URL:
- http://ext4.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Ext4_Howto
+found at the ext4 wiki site at the URL:
+http://ext4.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Ext4_Howto
- Compile and install the latest version of e2fsprogs (as of this
writing version 1.41.3) from:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=2406
-
+
or
https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/tytso/e2fsprogs/
you will need to merge your changes with the version from e2fsprogs
1.41.x.
- - Create a new filesystem using the ext4 filesystem type:
+ - Create a new filesystem using the ext4 filesystem type:::
- # mke2fs -t ext4 /dev/hda1
+ # mke2fs -t ext4 /dev/hda1
- Or to configure an existing ext3 filesystem to support extents:
+ Or to configure an existing ext3 filesystem to support extents:::
# tune2fs -O extents /dev/hda1
If the filesystem was created with 128 byte inodes, it can be
- converted to use 256 byte for greater efficiency via:
+ converted to use 256 byte for greater efficiency via:::
# tune2fs -I 256 /dev/hda1
filesystem back to ext3; so please do not do try this on production
filesystems.)
- - Mounting:
+ - Mounting:::
# mount -t ext4 /dev/hda1 /wherever
the filesystem with a large journal can also be helpful for
metadata-intensive workloads.
-2. Features
-===========
+Features
+========
-2.1 Currently available
+Currently Available
+-------------------
* ability to use filesystems > 16TB (e2fsprogs support not available yet)
* extent format reduces metadata overhead (RAM, IO for access, transactions)
[1] Filesystems with a block size of 1k may see a limit imposed by the
directory hash tree having a maximum depth of two.
-2.2 Candidate features for future inclusion
+Candidate Features for Future Inclusion
+---------------------------------------
* online defrag (patches available but not well tested)
* reduced mke2fs time via lazy itable initialization in conjunction with
- http://www.bullopensource.org/ext4/20080818-ffsb/ffsb-write-2.6.27-rc1.html
- http://www.bullopensource.org/ext4/20080818-ffsb/ffsb-readwrite-2.6.27-rc1.html
-3. Options
-==========
+Options
+=======
When mounting an ext4 filesystem, the following option are accepted:
(*) == default
+======================= =======================================================
+Mount Option Description
+======================= =======================================================
ro Mount filesystem read only. Note that ext4 will
replay the journal (and thus write to the
partition) even when mounted "read only". The
dax Use direct access (no page cache). See
Documentation/filesystems/dax.txt. Note that
this option is incompatible with data=journal.
+======================= =======================================================
Data Mode
=========
There are 3 different data modes:
* writeback mode
-In data=writeback mode, ext4 does not journal data at all. This mode provides
-a similar level of journaling as that of XFS, JFS, and ReiserFS in its default
-mode - metadata journaling. A crash+recovery can cause incorrect data to
-appear in files which were written shortly before the crash. This mode will
-typically provide the best ext4 performance.
+
+ In data=writeback mode, ext4 does not journal data at all. This mode provides
+ a similar level of journaling as that of XFS, JFS, and ReiserFS in its default
+ mode - metadata journaling. A crash+recovery can cause incorrect data to
+ appear in files which were written shortly before the crash. This mode will
+ typically provide the best ext4 performance.
* ordered mode
-In data=ordered mode, ext4 only officially journals metadata, but it logically
-groups metadata information related to data changes with the data blocks into a
-single unit called a transaction. When it's time to write the new metadata
-out to disk, the associated data blocks are written first. In general,
-this mode performs slightly slower than writeback but significantly faster than journal mode.
+
+ In data=ordered mode, ext4 only officially journals metadata, but it logically
+ groups metadata information related to data changes with the data blocks into
+ a single unit called a transaction. When it's time to write the new metadata
+ out to disk, the associated data blocks are written first. In general, this
+ mode performs slightly slower than writeback but significantly faster than
+ journal mode.
* journal mode
-data=journal mode provides full data and metadata journaling. All new data is
-written to the journal first, and then to its final location.
-In the event of a crash, the journal can be replayed, bringing both data and
-metadata into a consistent state. This mode is the slowest except when data
-needs to be read from and written to disk at the same time where it
-outperforms all others modes. Enabling this mode will disable delayed
-allocation and O_DIRECT support.
+
+ data=journal mode provides full data and metadata journaling. All new data is
+ written to the journal first, and then to its final location. In the event of
+ a crash, the journal can be replayed, bringing both data and metadata into a
+ consistent state. This mode is the slowest except when data needs to be read
+ from and written to disk at the same time where it outperforms all others
+ modes. Enabling this mode will disable delayed allocation and O_DIRECT
+ support.
/proc entries
=============
in table below.
Files in /proc/fs/ext4/<devname>
-..............................................................................
+
+================ =======
File Content
+================ =======
mb_groups details of multiblock allocator buddy cache of free blocks
-..............................................................................
+================ =======
/sys entries
============
/sys/fs/ext4/dm-0). The files in each per-device directory are shown
in table below.
-Files in /sys/fs/ext4/<devname>
+Files in /sys/fs/ext4/<devname>:
+
(see also Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-fs-ext4)
-..............................................................................
- File Content
+============================= =================================================
+File Content
+============================= =================================================
delayed_allocation_blocks This file is read-only and shows the number of
blocks that are dirty in the page cache, but
which do not have their location in the
filesystem allocated yet.
- inode_goal Tuning parameter which (if non-zero) controls
+inode_goal Tuning parameter which (if non-zero) controls
the goal inode used by the inode allocator in
preference to all other allocation heuristics.
This is intended for debugging use only, and
should be 0 on production systems.
- inode_readahead_blks Tuning parameter which controls the maximum
+inode_readahead_blks Tuning parameter which controls the maximum
number of inode table blocks that ext4's inode
table readahead algorithm will pre-read into
the buffer cache
- lifetime_write_kbytes This file is read-only and shows the number of
+lifetime_write_kbytes This file is read-only and shows the number of
kilobytes of data that have been written to this
filesystem since it was created.
in the file system. If there is not enough space
for the reserved space when mounting the file
mount will _not_ fail.
-..............................................................................
+============================= =================================================
Ioctls
======
shown in the table below.
Table of Ext4 specific ioctls
-..............................................................................
- Ioctl Description
+
+============================= =================================================
+Ioctl Description
+============================= =================================================
EXT4_IOC_GETFLAGS Get additional attributes associated with inode.
The ioctl argument is an integer bitfield, with
bit values described in ext4.h. This ioctl is an
normal user by accident.
The data blocks of the previous boot loader
will be associated with the given inode.
-
-..............................................................................
+============================= =================================================
References
==========