FSADM(8)

📦
version 2.03.44 · 14 versions
, in arch rolling

💖 FSADM(8) — the girlies' guide to resizing and checking filesystems 💖

okay so bestie, this is fsadm from the System Manager's Manual. Yes it's a real man page about real grown-up sysadmin stuff, and yes I'm about to make it make sense. 🎀

✨ NAME ✨

fsadm — the lil utility that resizes or checks a filesystem sitting on a device. 👑

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

fsadm [options] check device
fsadm [options] resize device [new_size]

Short. Sweet. Two moods: check the vibe or resize the vibe. That's it, that's the whole thing. 💅

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

So the fsadm utility checks or resizes the filesystem on a device — and plot twist, that device can also be a dm-crypt encrypted device, because it's inclusive like that. 🔐

It tries to use the same API for ext2, ext3, ext4, ReiserFS and XFS filesystems. One utility, five filesystems, one API. It's giving "I don't play favourites". 💖

💅 OPTIONS 💅

The full menu, no skips, no skimming. Every single flag is here and every single one matters, fr fr.

  • -e|--ext-offline — Unmount the ext2/ext3/ext4 filesystem before doing the resize. Like clearing the table before you redecorate. ✨
  • -f|--force — Bypass some sanity checks. Bestie, sanity checks exist for a reason, but sometimes you just gotta. 😭
  • -h|--help — Display the help text. Your friendly lil "what does this do again" button. 🫶
  • -l|--lvresize — Also resize the given lvm2 logical volume. And heads up: more volume management functionality is provided with the complementary lvresize(8) and the option -r|--resizefs. So if you want the fuller menu, go look over there. 👀
  • -n|--dry-run — Print the commands that would change devices without actually running them. It reads filesystem geometry and performs the available read-only checks. It does not mount or unmount filesystems. Offline checks of mounted filesystems, and ReiserFS checks that may replay the journal, are skipped with a warning. And real talk: a successful dry run does not guarantee that a later resize will succeed. 🙈
  • -v|--verbose — Be more verbose. More words. More lore. More of everything you wanted to know. 🗣️
  • -y|--yes — Answer "yes" at any prompts. Unattended-mode icon behaviour, honestly. ✅
  • -c|--cryptresize — Resize the dm-crypt mapping together with the filesystem detected on the device. Important: the dm-crypt device must be recognizable by cryptsetup(8). No cryptsetup recognition, no party. 🔐
  • new_size[B|K|M|G|T|P|E] — This is either the absolute number of filesystem blocks that should be in the filesystem, or an absolute size using a suffix (and those suffixes are in powers of 1024, bestie, so don't come at it with 1000). If new_size is not supplied, the whole device is used. Simple as. 🍓

😭 DIAGNOSTICS 😭

The exit codes, aka "how did it go":

  • On successful completion, the status code is 0. Slay. 🎉
  • A status code of 2 indicates the operation was interrupted by the user. That was you. You did that. 💀
  • A status code of 3 indicates the requested check operation could not be performed because the filesystem is mounted and does not support an online fsck(8). Rude, honestly.
  • A status code of 1 is used for other failures. The classic "something else went wrong" bucket. 🙃

🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

Okay real scenario: resize the filesystem on logical volume /dev/vg/test to 1000 MiB. If /dev/vg/test contains an ext2/ext3/ext4 filesystem, it will be unmounted prior to the resize. And all [y/n] questions will be answered 'y'. 😌

fsadm -e -y resize /dev/vg/test 1000M

Look at that. One line. Unmounted, resized, and every prompt pre-answered. Main character command behaviour. 👑

🧚 ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES 🧚

The little settings that live in your shell and whisper to fsadm:

  • TMPDIR — the temporary directory name for mount points. Defaults to "/tmp". 🏠
  • DM_DEV_DIR — the device directory name. Defaults to "/dev" and must be an absolute path. Absolute means absolute, bestie, no shortcuts. ⭐

🫶 SEE ALSO 🫶

The friend group, in their little clusters:

quick reminder, bestie: everything above is straight from the actual manual — the flags, the numbers, the paths, the exit codes, all of it. I just made it cute. Don't @ me if you skip the sanity checks, that's between you and -f. 💖

and that's the page 🎀 — brought to you by Red Hat, Inc., running LVM TOOLS 2.03.44(2) dated 2026-10-27. mwah, go resize something responsibly 💅✨

📦 where this page comes from