regular fsck runs are too disturbing

Christof Krüger ubuntu at pop2wap.net
Wed Oct 10 11:14:51 UTC 2007


On Wed, 2007-10-10 at 12:02 +0200, mike corn wrote:
> How about running fsck only when the file system was not properly
>  unmounted the last time it was online? (crash, power fail)
> 
> Assuming the file system is robust and bug-free, this should be
>  adequate. 

For this to be true, you need another assumption: All hardware is
absolutely reliable which just is not the case.

If a bit flip occurs due to bad RAM, a bad IDE cable, chipset problems
or whatever, wrong values might be written to disk even with perfectly
bug-free software. Such errors often don't have lethal impact from the
beginning so that the user might not notice until its already too late.
Having a scan from time to time might show up slight file system
inconsistencies and raise attention to the user. Hinting a user to make
backups after fsck had discovered errors on a regular scan (as opposed
to a scan after a crash or power failure) would also be nice.

However, I strongly agree that the user should be given the option to
abort the scan. This also implies that the user is being informed on the
splash screen first and that he knows what is actually about to happen.
Just having the progress bar not moving for some time and going to
console after the timeout occurs might look quite disturbing for
inexperienced users.

Regards,
  Christof Krüger





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