January 2003
Intermediate to advanced
480 pages
13h 22m
English
Content preview from UNIX Filesystems: Evolution, Design, and Implementation
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
Start your free trial
The Filesystem Debugger
When things go wrong with filesystems, it is necessary to debug them in the same way that it is necessary to debug other applications. Most UNIX filesystems have shipped with the filesystem debugger, fsdb, which can be used for that purpose.
It is with good reason that fsdb is one of the least commonly used of the UNIX commands. In order to use fsdb effectively, knowledge of the filesystem structure on disk is vital, as well as knowledge of how to use the filesystem specific version of fsdb. Note that one version of fsdb does not necessarily bear any resemblance to another.
In general, fsdb should be left well alone. Because it is possible to damage the filesystem beyond repair, its use should be left for filesystem developers and support engineers only.