Red Hat Training

A Red Hat training course is available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux

8.8. Other XFS File System Utilities

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 also features other utilities for managing XFS file systems:

xfs_fsr: Used to defragment mounted XFS file systems. When invoked with no arguments, xfs_fsr defragments all regular files in all mounted XFS file systems. This utility also allows users to suspend a defragmentation at a specified time and resume from where it left off later.
In addition, xfs_fsr also allows the defragmentation of only one file, as in xfs_fsr /path/to/file. Red Hat advises against periodically defragmenting an entire file system, as this is normally not warranted.
xfs_bmap: Prints the map of disk blocks used by files in an XFS filesystem. This map lists each extent used by a specified file, as well as regions in the file with no corresponding blocks (that is, holes).
xfs_info: Prints XFS file system information.
xfs_admin: Changes the parameters of an XFS file system. The xfs_admin utility can only modify parameters of unmounted devices or file systems.
xfs_copy: Copies the contents of an entire XFS file system to one or more targets in parallel.

The following utilities are also useful in debugging and analyzing XFS file systems:

xfs_metadump: Copies XFS file system metadata to a file. The xfs_metadump utility should only be used to copy unmounted, read-only, or frozen/suspended file systems; otherwise, generated dumps could be corrupted or inconsistent.
xfs_mdrestore: Restores an XFS metadump image (generated using xfs_metadump) to a file system image.
xfs_db: Debugs an XFS file system.

For more information about these utilities, refer to their respective man pages.