xfs_healer(8)

📦 version 7.2.1, in alpine 3.24, arch rolling, fedora 44, nixpkgs unstable

✨ xfs_healer — the manual page, but make it cute ✨

okay bestie, welcome to xfs_healer(8), straight out of the System Manager's Manual 💖 this is the daemon that just... heals your XFS metadata for you. no big deal. it is a big deal actually.

🌸 NAME 🌸

xfs_healer — automatically heal damage to XFS filesystem metadata 🩹✨

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

xfs_healer [ OPTIONS ] mount-point
xfs_healer -V

like. that's it. that's the whole summoning ritual 💅

💜 DESCRIPTION 💜

xfs_healer is a daemon that tries to automatically repair damaged XFS filesystem metadata. she's your little metadata nurse 🩺 no cap.

WARNING! This program is EXPERIMENTAL, which means that its behavior and interface could change at any time! 😭 do not get attached. she's still figuring herself out.

xfs_healer asks the kernel to report all observations of corrupt metadata, media errors, filesystem shutdowns, and file I/O errors. and then, when runtime metadata corruption errors show up, she can respond by initiating targeted repairs of the suspect metadata, or by kicking off a full online fsck of the filesystem. she's got range 👑

Normally this program runs as a systemd service. the service gets activated via the xfs_healer_start service if systemd is supported. (iykyk 🌈)

The kernel may not support repairing or optimizing the filesystem. if that's the vibe, the filesystem must be unmounted and xfs_repair(8) run on the filesystem to fix the problems. rude, but that's the rules 🙈

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

  • --everything — Ask the kernel to send us good metadata health events, not only events related to metadata corruption, media errors, shutdowns, and I/O errors. she wants the whole tea, not just the drama ☕💅
  • --foreground — Start enough event handling threads to allow consumption of all online CPUs. If not specified, start exactly one event handling thread. one single thread. living her simple life 🧚
  • --no-autofsck — Do not use the autofsck filesystem property to decide whether or not to repair corrupt metadata. If the --repair option is given, then all corruptions will be repaired. If the --repair option is not given, then the program will never try to repair the filesystem. so basically: you decide, she obeys 🫶
  • --quiet — Do not print every event to standard output. she's being demure 😌
  • --repair — Always try to repair each piece of corrupt metadata when the kernel tells us about it. If an individual repair fails or the kernel tells us that health events were lost, the xfs_scrub service for this mount point will be launched. The default is not to try to repair anything. If this option is specified but the kernel does not support repairs, the program will exit. 💀 harsh but honest
  • --supported — Check if the filesystem supports sending health events. Exits with 0 if it does, and non-zero if not. vibe check, basically ✅❌
  • -V — Prints the version number and exit. that's the whole thing. she's an icon ⭐

🌈 AUTOFSCK 🌈

By default, this program will read the autofsck filesystem property to decide if it should try to repair corruptions. If the property is set to these values:

  • repair — Corruptions will be repaired. 💖
  • check or optimize — Corruptions will be logged. 📝
  • none — The program will exit. 🚪 she's leaving

If the property is not set but the filesystem supports any back-reference metadata (reverse mappings and parent pointers), then corruptions will be logged. If no back-reference metadata are present, the program will exit.

See the xfs_scrub(8) manual page for more details on this filesystem property. she explains it better, fr fr 📖

🔥 CAVEATS 🔥

xfs_healer is an immature utility! 😭

Do not run this program unless you have backups of your data! like. seriously bestie. back it up. back it up TWICE. 👑

This program takes advantage of in-kernel scrubbing to verify a given data structure with locks held and can keep the filesystem busy for a long time. The kernel must be new enough to support the SCRUB_METADATA ioctl. no old kernels allowed, sorry 💅

If errors are found and cannot be repaired, the filesystem must be unmounted and repaired. periodt. 🛑

👑 SEE ALSO 👑

xfs_repair(8) and xfs_scrub(8). the whole girl squad 🫶

and that's the page, bestie 💖 this was xfs_healer(8) from the System Manager's Manual — page xfs_healer(8), that's the source, that's the version, that's the date tag living down in the footer. go heal some metadata, but back up first, love u 🌸🦋✨

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