E2IMAGE(8)						      System Manager's Manual							E2IMAGE(8)

NAME

       e2image - Save critical ext2 filesystem data to a file

SYNOPSIS

       e2image [ -r ] device image-file

DESCRIPTION

       The  e2image  program  will  save critical filesystem data on the ext2 filesystem 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 be used by an expert  in  assisting
       the  recovery  of  catastrophically corrupted filesystems.  In the future, e2fsck will be enhanced to be able to use the image file to help
       recover a badly damaged filesystem.

       If image-file is -, then the output of e2image will be sent to standard output.

       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 don't understand how to create sparse files; the file will become as
       large as the filesystem itself!)  Secondly, the raw image file also includes indirect blocks and data blocks, which the current image  file
       does not have, although this may change in the future.

       It  is  a  very	good idea to periodically (at boot time and every week or so) to create image files for all of filesystems on a system, as
       well as saving the partition layout (which can be generated using the using fdisk -l command).  Ideally the image file should be stored	on
       some  filesystem  other	that the filesystem whose data it contains, to ensure that its data is accessible in the case where the filesystem
       has been badly damaged.

       To save disk space, e2image creates the image file as a sparse file.  Hence, if the image file needs to be copied to another  location,	it
       should either be compressed first or copied using the --sparse=always option to GNU version of cp.

       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 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 compress down to 3 or 4 megabytes.

AUTHOR

       e2image was written by Theodore Ts'o (tytso@mit.edu).

AVAILABILITY

       e2image is part of the e2fsprogs package and is available from anonymous http://e2fsprogs.sourceforge.net.

SEE ALSO

       dumpe2fs(8), debugfs(8)

E2fsprogs version 1.32						   November 2002							E2IMAGE(8)