fsck on mounted system?

[Avi Greenbury]

Liam Proven wrote:
> On 7 September 2012 14:30, Dave Howorth <dhoworth at mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk>
> wrote:
> > Liam Proven wrote:
> >> On 7 September 2012 11:26, oxy <oxyopes at googlemail.com> wrote:
> >>>> sudo touch /forcefsck
> >>>>
> >>>> and then the filesystem should be checked at the next reboot.
> >>>
> >>> is there a way to force fsck on shutdown?
> >>
> >> No, not AFAIK, because the system would have to drop from a
> >> multituser runlevel down to single-user in order that the
> >> filesystems could be remounted read-only.
> >
> > That could be done of course,
> 
> Yes, you are quite right. Non-trivial, though, and liable to cause
> questions to be asked of a user who will not be able to answer them.

This is hardly different to a boot-time check, though. Perhaps it could
do a check-without-repair, then prompt with questions on next boot?

> > but at shutdown, the system is also in its
> > 'most likely to be corrupt' state. Not the ideal time to run some
> > self-checking code.
> 
> Not 100% convinced of that, but OTOH, what we have works, so by the
> KISS principle I am inclined to leave it well alone.

I don't think it does. I've never booted up a computer intending to not
use it until it's had time to fsck its disks. I don't recall the last
time any of my workstations got to the natural end of an automatic fsck
and I'd be surprised if I wasn't in at least a substantial minority.

-- 
Avi