fstrim(8) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | EXIT STATUS | AUTHORS | SEE ALSO | REPORTING BUGS | AVAILABILITY

FSTRIM(8)                 System Administration                FSTRIM(8)

NAME         top

       fstrim - discard unused blocks on a mounted filesystem

SYNOPSIS         top

       fstrim [-Aav] [-o offset] [-l length] [-m minimum-size]
       [mountpoint]

DESCRIPTION         top

       fstrim is used on a mounted filesystem to discard (or "trim")
       blocks which are not in use by the filesystem. This is useful for
       solid-state drives (SSDs) and thinly-provisioned storage.

       By default, fstrim will discard all unused blocks in the
       filesystem. Options may be used to modify this behavior based on
       range or size, as explained below.

       The mountpoint argument is the pathname of the directory where
       the filesystem is mounted and is required when -A, -a, --fstab,
       or --all are unspecified.

       Running fstrim frequently, or even using mount -o discard, might
       negatively affect the lifetime of poor-quality SSD devices. For
       most desktop and server systems a sufficient trimming frequency
       is once a week. Note that not all devices support a queued trim,
       so each trim command incurs a performance penalty on whatever
       else might be trying to use the disk at the time.

OPTIONS         top

       The offset, length, and minimum-size arguments may be followed by
       the multiplicative suffixes KiB (=1024), MiB (=1024*1024), and so
       on for GiB, TiB, PiB, EiB, ZiB and YiB (the "iB" is optional,
       e.g., "K" has the same meaning as "KiB") or the suffixes KB
       (=1000), MB (=1000*1000), and so on for GB, TB, PB, EB, ZB and
       YB.

       -A, --fstab
           Trim all mounted filesystems mentioned in /etc/fstab on
           devices that support the discard operation. The root
           filesystem is determined from kernel command line if missing
           in the file. The other supplied options, like --offset,
           --length and --minimum, are applied to all these devices.
           Errors from filesystems that do not support the discard
           operation, read-only devices, autofs and read-only
           filesystems are silently ignored. Filesystems with
           "X-fstrim.notrim" mount option are skipped.

       -a, --all
           Trim all mounted filesystems on devices that support the
           discard operation. The other supplied options, like --offset,
           --length and --minimum, are applied to all these devices.
           Errors from filesystems that do not support the discard
           operation, read-only devices and read-only filesystems are
           silently ignored.

       -n, --dry-run
           This option does everything apart from actually call FITRIM
           ioctl.

       -o, --offset offset
           Byte offset in the filesystem from which to begin searching
           for free blocks to discard. The default value is zero,
           starting at the beginning of the filesystem.

       -l, --length length
           The number of bytes (after the starting point) to search for
           free blocks to discard. If the specified value extends past
           the end of the filesystem, fstrim will stop at the filesystem
           size boundary. The default value extends to the end of the
           filesystem.

       -I, --listed-in list
           Specifies a colon-separated list of files in fstab or kernel
           mountinfo format. All missing or empty files are silently
           ignored. The evaluation of the list stops after first
           non-empty file. For example:

           --listed-in /etc/fstab:/proc/self/mountinfo.

           Filesystems with "X-fstrim.notrim" mount option in fstab are
           skipped.

       -m, --minimum minimum-size
           Minimum contiguous free range to discard, in bytes. (This
           value is internally rounded up to a multiple of the
           filesystem block size.) Free ranges smaller than this will be
           ignored and fstrim will adjust the minimum if it’s smaller
           than the device’s minimum, and report that
           (fstrim_range.minlen) back to userspace. By increasing this
           value, the fstrim operation will complete more quickly for
           filesystems with badly fragmented freespace, although not all
           blocks will be discarded. The default value is zero,
           discarding every free block.

       -t, --types list
           Specifies allowed or forbidden filesystem types when used
           with --all or --fstab. The list is a comma-separated list of
           the filesystem names. The list follows how mount -t evaluates
           type patterns. Only specified filesystem types are allowed.
           All specified types are forbidden if the list is prefixed by
           "no" or each filesystem prefixed by "no" is forbidden. If the
           option is not used, then all filesystems (except "autofs")
           are allowed.

       -v, --verbose
           Verbose execution. With this option fstrim will output the
           number of bytes passed from the filesystem down the block
           stack to the device for potential discard. This number is a
           maximum discard amount from the storage device’s perspective,
           because FITRIM ioctl called repeated will keep sending the
           same sectors for discard repeatedly.

           fstrim will report the same potential discard bytes each
           time, but only sectors which had been written to between the
           discards would actually be discarded by the storage device.
           Further, the kernel block layer reserves the right to adjust
           the discard ranges to fit raid stripe geometry, non-trim
           capable devices in a LVM setup, etc. These reductions would
           not be reflected in fstrim_range.len (the --length option).

       --quiet-unsupported
           Suppress error messages if trim operation (ioctl) is
           unsupported. This option is meant to be used in systemd
           service file or in cron(8) scripts to hide warnings that are
           result of known problems, such as NTFS driver reporting Bad
           file descriptor when device is mounted read-only, or lack of
           file system support for ioctl FITRIM call. This option also
           cleans exit status when unsupported filesystem specified on
           fstrim command line.

       -h, --help
           Display help text and exit.

       -V, --version
           Print version and exit.

EXIT STATUS         top

       0
           success

       1
           failure

       32
           all failed

       64
           some filesystem discards have succeeded, some failed

       The command fstrim --all returns 0 (all succeeded), 32 (all
       failed) or 64 (some failed, some succeeded).

AUTHORS         top

       Lukas Czerner <lczerner@redhat.com>, Karel Zak <kzak@redhat.com>

SEE ALSO         top

       blkdiscard(8), mount(8)

REPORTING BUGS         top

       For bug reports, use the issue tracker at
       https://github.com/util-linux/util-linux/issues.

AVAILABILITY         top

       The fstrim command is part of the util-linux package which can be
       downloaded from Linux Kernel Archive
       <https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/>. This page
       is part of the util-linux (a random collection of Linux
       utilities) project. Information about the project can be found at
       ⟨https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/⟩. If you have
       a bug report for this manual page, send it to
       util-linux@vger.kernel.org. This page was obtained from the
       project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/utils/util-linux/util-linux.git⟩ on
       2023-12-22. (At that time, the date of the most recent commit
       that was found in the repository was 2023-12-14.) 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

util-linux 2.39.594-1e0ad      2023-07-19                      FSTRIM(8)

Pages that refer to this page: blkdiscard(8)dmeventd(8)