Ext2fs Home Page

Release 1.47.2 of e2fsprogs is available!

On January 1, 2025, version 1.47.2 of e2fsprogs was announced.

Ext2fs Utilities

• e2fsprogs, which consists of e2fsck, mke2fs, debugfs, dumpe2fs, tune2fs, and most of the other core ext2fs filesystem utilities.
• dump, which will allow you to make backups of your ext2 filesystems. It uses a format which is compatible with the BSD dump and restore programs.
• defrag, which will defragment your ext2 filesystem
• ext2ed, which is a text/windows (curses) interface for examining and editing an ext2 filesystem. It unfortunately is limited to filesystems smaller than 2GB, and is heavily Intel byte order dependent, and has apparently been abandoned by its original author. (So for those people who were used to seeing ext2ed in older Linux distributions, and wondered where it went to, that's the explanation.)

  It has been integrated into e2fsprogs version 1.28, but its limitations mean that it should only be used by developers who need to generate test cases.

• Ext2fsd, An ext2 filesystem driver for Windows NT/2K/XP. The most recent version has read-write support.

Papers and Documentation of the Ext2 Filesystem

• Design and Implementation of the Second Extended Filesystem

Other useful links related to the ext2 filesystem

• Ext4 --- Future enhancements to ext3
  • Ext4 development wiki
  • Ext2/3 development home page

• Ext3 --- Journaling for ext2fs
  • Ext3 Journaling design paper

• Large File Support API

Other Linux filesystem development efforts

• The Global File System (GFS)
• SGI's XFS port to Linux