DESCRIPTION The e2image program will save critical ext2, ext3, or ext4 filesystem metadata located on device to a file specified by image-file. The image file may be examined by dumpe2fs and debugfs, by using the -i option to those programs. This can assist an expert in recovering catastrophically corrupted filesystems. In the future, e2fsck will be enhanced to be able to use the image file to help recover a badly dam- aged filesystem.
When saving an e2image for debugging purposes, using either the -r or -Q options, the filesystem must be unmounted or be mounted read/only, in order for the image file to be in a consistent state. This require- ment can be overridden using the -f option, but the resulting image file is very likely not going to be useful.
It is a very good idea to create image files for all of filesystems on a system and save the partition layout (which can be generated using the fdisk -l command) at regular intervals --- at boot time, and/or every week or so. The image file should be stored on some filesystem other than the filesystem whose data it contains, to ensure that this data is accessible in the case where the filesystem has been badly dam- aged.
To save disk space, e2image creates the image file as a sparse file, or in QCOW2 format. Hence, if the sparse image file needs to be copied to another location, it should either be compressed first or copied using the --sparse=always option to the GNU version of cp. This does not apply to the QCOW2 image, which is not sparse.
The size of an ext2 image file depends primarily on the size of the filesystems and how many inodes are in use. For a typical 10 gigabyte filesystem, with 200,000 inodes in use out of 1.2 million inodes, the image file will be approximately 35 megabytes; a 4 gigabyte filesystem with 15,000 inodes in use out of 550,000 inodes will result in a 3 megabyte image file. Image files tend to be quite compressible; an image file taking up 32 megabytes of space on disk will generally com- press down to 3 or 4 megabytes.
RESTORING FILESYSTEM METADATA USING AN IMAGE FILE The -I option will cause e2image to install the metadata stored in the image file back to the device. It can be used to restore the filesystem metadata back to the device in emergency situations.
WARNING!!!! The -I option should only be used as a desperation measure when other alternatives have failed. If the filesystem has changed since the image file was created, data will be lost. In general, you should make a full image backup of the filesystem first, in case you wish to try other recovery strategies afterwards.
RAW IMAGE FILES The -r option will create a raw image file instead of a normal image file. A raw image file differs from a normal image file in two ways. First, the filesystem metadata is placed in the proper position so that e2fsck, dumpe2fs, debugfs, etc. can be run directly on the raw image file. In order to minimize the amount of disk space consumed by a raw image file, the file is created as a sparse file. (Beware of copying or compressing/decompressing this file with utilities that dont under- stand how to create sparse files; the file will become as large as the filesystem itself!) Secondly, the raw image file also includes indi- rect blocks and directory blocks, which the standard image file does not have, although this may change in the future.
This will only send the metadata information, without any data blocks. However, the filenames in the directory blocks can still reveal infor- mation about the contents of the filesystem that the bug reporter may wish to keep confidential. To address this concern, the -s option can be specified. This will cause e2image to scramble directory entries and zero out any unused portions of the directory blocks before writing the image file. However, the -s option will prevent analysis of prob- lems related to hash-tree indexed directories.
Note that this will work even if you substitute "/dev/hda1" for another raw disk image, or QCOW2 image previously created by e2image.
QCOW2 IMAGE FILES The -Q option will create a QCOW2 image file instead of a normal, or raw image file. A QCOW2 image contains all the information the raw image does, however unlike the raw image it is not sparse. The QCOW2 image minimize the amount of disk space by storing data in special for- mat with pack data closely together, hence avoiding holes while still minimizing size.
Note that QCOW2 image created by e2image is regular QCOW2 image and can be processed by tools aware of QCOW2 format such as for example qemu- img.
AUTHOR e2image was written by Theodore Tso (tytso@mit.edu).
AVAILABILITY e2image is part of the e2fsprogs package and is available from http://e2fsprogs.sourceforge.net.