regular fsck runs are too disturbing - why not "badblocks"?

[Vincenzo Ciancia]

On 27/09/2007 Oliver Grawert wrote:
> > What about my alternative suggestion? It would still run fsck, but at
> > > the same time be less annoying or not disturbing at all.
> not wsure if you ever ran fsck manually, but you have to unmount the
> partition you check or at least mount it readonly ...
> 
> so no matter how far you will background it you wont be able to work
> while it runs ...

If the point of running that (annoying, indeed) fsck is to check for
disk defect, why not running "badblocks" instead? It can do a read-only
check on a mounted filesystem. You could modify that so that it runs
only when other processes are not accessing the disk. In any case,
having a journaled filesystem by default and blocking users while they
might be in a hurry is not pleasant. At least leave the possibility of
interrupting the check. Suppose you are at a conference, and it starts
checking your disk, and you start your talk late for that reason. What
will other people think about ubuntu? Is this good publicity?

Vincenzo