Clean your filesystem with FSlint

Garbage Collector

© Lead Image © denis cristo, 123RF.com

© Lead Image © denis cristo, 123RF.com

Article from Issue 177/2015
Author(s): , Author(s):

FSlint detects the source of filesystem problems and remedies or mitigates them while cleaning up the hard drive.

In principle, filesystems are large, not particularly intelligent databases that tend to gather a lot of dust and fluff over time. Occasionally checking and, if necessary, repairing filesystems to keep them functional is considered good practice.

At the system level at startup, fsck acts as a wrapper for various special tools that check and repair filesystems at the lowest (block) level; however, it does not take into account any problems that have anything to do with the logical (directory) structure, which can cause virtually the same amount of damage in the case of a mishap. Problems in the directory layer of the filesystem typically include "dangling links" (symbolic links that point to non-existent files) and problematic file names, among other difficulties.

Padraig Brady created the easy-to-use solution FSlint [1] with a straightforward graphical interface, fslint-gui, that combines and unifies the use of more than a dozen tools, each of which addresses a specific task (Table 1). All tools also can be used independent of the interface, enabling scripting and supporting work in the shell.

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