fsck on boot is major usability issue

Fri Dec 21 21:46:42 UTC 2007

I have been following this and I thought I would add my 2 cents worth

(1)     At shutdown is good

(2)     Timeout/interuptable  is good

(3)     BUT.  The default action should be No Action

At shutdown the user is prompted that a file system check is required

When the timeout occurs (it should be short  say 30 seconds) the default
should be to skip it until the next shutdown

IE the user has to explicitly select that now is a good time to do the fsck.

One the fsck is complete the machine turns off as usual

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chris Martin

m: 0419 812 371

e: chris at martin.name

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

  _____  

From: ubuntu-devel-discuss-bounces at lists.ubuntu.com
[mailto:ubuntu-devel-discuss-bounces at lists.ubuntu.com] On Behalf Of Jonathan
Musther
Sent: Saturday, 22 December 2007 5:54 AM
To: Aurélien Naldi
Cc: ubuntu-devel-discuss at lists.ubuntu.com
Subject: Re: fsck on boot is major usability issue

If it was moved to shutdown, I would assume that the user would be able to
skip it, or better yet they would be prompted.

I have been contacted by autofsck users who have turned off a laptop and
then closed the lid immediately (or turned off a desktop and immediately
switched off the monitor) and not noticed the autofsck dialogue, one user's
laptop remained powered on until the battery was flat.  In that particular
case it was in his laptop bag on a bus journey, not the best place to have a
powered up hard drive.  The latest version now contains a timeout, if no
selection is made within 2 minutes, the machine will shut down without
running the check.  There's also an audio prompt to try to combat this. 

The way I see it, if somebody turns on a computer, it doesn't matter whether
they absolutely need it right now, say for a presentation, but they
certainly want to use it now.  When most people shut down, they don't care
as they're no longer using it, with the addition of an autofsck style
prompt, they can postpone it if they need to.  

Every time a new feature in a new version of Ubuntu means faster boot times,
this is publicised as a great thing, I find it odd that at the same time we
allow one in every 30 boots to be very, very long (with modern sized disks).

On Dec 22, 2007 2:20 AM, Aurélien Naldi <aurelien.naldi at gmail.com> wrote:

On ven, 2007-12-21 at 08:13 -0500, Evan wrote:
> My personal preference would be to move it to shut-down, but an
> interruptable check on boot is better than nothing. Just my two cents. 

I'm not sure that moving it to shutdown is a proper solution. Think
about a laptop shuting down because its battery is nearly empty: how
good is it to slow down the shutdown and risk a brutal power off ? 
Also, I'm often waiting for my computer to shutdown before leaving, I
don't want to be late because of a fsck.

Making it interruptible and runnable on demande easily is more
important, then it can be on bootup or shutdown, I don't care ;) 

Regards.
--
Aurelien Naldi

--
Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list
Ubuntu-devel-discuss at lists.ubuntu.com 
Modify settings or unsubscribe at:
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss

-- 
Slingshot - a unique game everyone enjoys  - and it's free :-)
http://www.slingshot-game.org 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-discuss/attachments/20071222/1d69a956/attachment.html>