thanks, statux... by disabling, do you mean deleting fsck from the install, or not automatically running it after X months/Y reboots? bugs in the ext3 code aside, is there any advantage in setting it up to autorun at all or to wait for "something funny to happen"? what I'm getting at is, if it's allright to not run fsck for 24 months for ext3, but there's a chance that a bit flips that goes undetected, the bit could have flipped during month 1. if so, users/programs have been using that bad bit for 23 months. i.e. for an ext3 system, why bother telling the user to autorun fsck at all as opposed to just asking him/her to run it if "anything unusual starts happening"? your patience with my questions is appreciated. -- Tom ----- Original Message ----- From: "Statux" <statux@bigfoot.com> To: "Thomas Bassel" <tbassel@nc.rr.com> Cc: <ext3-users@redhat.com> Sent: Wednesday, May 15, 2002 9:14 AM Subject: Re: when is fsck required? > > the ext3 mini-howto refers to "certain > > rare hardware failure cases (e.g. hard > > drive failures)" that would require a > > filesystem check, but doesn't go into > > details. > > Hardware problems (not necessarily failures) and bugs in the ext3 code > (the reason why drivers are never really finished as far as development > goes; new versions always coming out to fix some issue). > > Do you need to run fsck nearly as often as with ext2? No. Should you > completely disable it? No. > > You should fsck now and then just in case something strange happened along > the way which you didn't see (most blips with any filesystem aren't known > until an fs checker combs the system). Right now, the default (on redhat > systems) seems to be 20 mounts or 6 months with ext2. If you mount often > (ie. for systems that aren't up for weeks or months on end) I'd set the > max mount count much higher. If your system runs for long periods of time, > then maybe setting the time interval would be better.. 6 months for any > system though is long enough. > > Also, you could disable the fsck'ing by setting the numbers to 0 (I think > *might* work), but I'd still run an fsck every so often on each partition > (in your spare time of course) just as a precaution. No code and no > hardware is perfect... everything's affected by something called physics > :) > > Sorry if I sounded like I was rambling a little at times (I'm half > asleep) :) > > -Statux > >
