xfs_healer(8) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | AUTOFSCK | CAVEATS | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

xfs_healer(8)            System Manager's Manual            xfs_healer(8)

NAME         top

       xfs_healer - automatically heal damage to XFS filesystem metadata

SYNOPSIS         top

       xfs_healer [ OPTIONS ] mount-point
       xfs_healer -V

DESCRIPTION         top

       xfs_healer is a daemon that tries to automatically repair damaged
       XFS filesystem metadata.

       WARNING!  This program is EXPERIMENTAL, which means that its
       behavior and interface could change at any time!

       xfs_healer asks the kernel to report all observations of corrupt
       metadata, media errors, filesystem shutdowns, and file I/O errors.
       The program can respond to runtime metadata corruption errors by
       initiating targeted repairs of the suspect metadata or a full
       online fsck of the filesystem.

       Normally this program runs as a systemd service.  The service is
       activated via the xfs_healer_start service if systemd is
       supported.

       The kernel may not support repairing or optimizing the filesystem.
       If this is the case, the filesystem must be unmounted and
       xfs_repair(8) run on the filesystem to fix the problems.

OPTIONS         top

       --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.

       --foreground
              Start enough event handling threads to allow consumption of
              all online CPUs.  If not specified, start exactly one event
              handling thread.

       --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.

       --quiet
              Do not print every event to standard output.

       --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.

       --supported
              Check if the filesystem supports sending health events.
              Exits with 0 if it does, and non-zero if not.

       -V     Prints the version number and exit.

AUTOFSCK         top

       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.

       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.

CAVEATS         top

       xfs_healer is an immature utility!  Do not run this program unless
       you have backups of your data!  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.

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

SEE ALSO         top

       xfs_repair(8) and xfs_scrub(8).

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the xfsprogs (utilities for XFS filesystems)
       project.  Information about the project can be found at 
       ⟨http://xfs.org/⟩.  If you have a bug report for this manual page,
       send it to linux-xfs@vger.kernel.org.  This page was obtained from
       the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/fs/xfs/xfsprogs-dev.git⟩ on
       2026-05-24.  (At that time, the date of the most recent commit
       that was found in the repository was 2026-05-19.)  If you discover
       any rendering problems in this HTML version of the page, or you
       believe there is a better or more up-to-date source for the page,
       or you have corrections or improvements to the information in this
       COLOPHON (which is not part of the original manual page), send a
       mail to man-pages@man7.org

                                                            xfs_healer(8)

Pages that refer to this page: xfs_healer_start(8)