In general, techniques are described for enabling a restartable file system. A computing device comprising a processor that executes an operating system may implement the techniques. The processor executes kernel and file system functions of the operating system to perform an operation, where both types of functions call each other to perform the operation. The operating system stores data identifying those of the kernel functions that called the file system functions. In response to determining that one of the file system functions that was called has failed, the operating system accesses the data to identify one of the kernel functions that most recently called one of the file system functions, and returns control to the identified one of the kernel functions without executing any of the file system functions called after the identified one of the kernel functions and prior to the one of the file system functions that failed.