4.53. e2fsprogs

Running the "e2fsck" command on certain corrupted file systems failed to correct all errors during the first run. This occurred when a file had its xattr block cloned as a duplicate, but the block was later removed from the file because the file system did not contain the xattr feature. However, the block was not cleared from the block bitmaps. During the second run, e2fsck found the cloned xattr block as in use, but not owned by any file, and had to repair the block bitmaps. With this update, the processing of duplicate xattr blocks is skipped on non-xattr file systems. All problems are now discovered during the first run.

On certain devices with very large physical sector size, the mke2fs utility set the block size to be as large as the size of the physical sector. In some cases, the size of the physical sector was larger than the page size. As a consequence, the file system could not be mounted and, in rare cases, the utility could even fail. With this update, the default block size is not set to be larger than the system's page size, even for large physical sector devices.

Previously, multiple manual pages contained typos. These typos have been corrected with this update.

This update modifies parameters of the "mke2fs" command to be consistent with the "discard" and "nodiscard" mount options for all system tools (like mount, fsck, or mkfs). The user is now also informed about the ongoing discard process.

Previously, the libcomm_err libraries were built without the read-only relocation (RELRO) flag. Programs built against these libraries could be vulnerable to various attacks based on overwriting the ELF section of a program. To enhance the security, the e2fsprogs package is now provided with partial RELRO support.

Previously, the tune2fs tool could not set "barrier=0" as the default option on the ext3 and ext4 file systems. With this update, users are now able to set this option when creating the file system, and do not have to maintain the option in the /etc/fstab file across all of the file systems and servers.

Previously, raw e2image output files could be extremely large sparse files, which were difficult to copy, archive, and transport. This update adds support for exporting images in the qcow format. Images in this format are small and easy to manipulate.