3 ms·

Uhm. What does "decided it was time to run fsck on my 1TB hard drive" mean? Decided how?

by olgeni 12y ago

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
mackwic 12y ago
Every n boot (n usually around 30) is scheduled a fsck at boot. It is more a legacy thing as ext4 is really robust. I remember checking my /home/lost+founds regularly in this time and often finding random stuff, music, documents where the i-node has been made orphan so that it doesn't belongs to any directory. Today, we have ntfs and ext4 with amazing journals which can replay most of the operation that has been made. So, when the Virtual-FS layer (the component of the kernel that map the bytes on your HDD to the logical file-tree in the exporer) detect an inconsistency it can replay and apply the correct state to the fs tree on the fly. Now that we have robust disks and robust fs, I think that this fsck at boot setting could be relaxed. However, think of the people needing saving their data with an fsck because their HDD wasn't as robust as yours. It's not an easy choice to do. You can't even base your decision on the SMART metrics as the worst HDD, the one you want to check regularly, lie to/don't implement correctly SMART.
- xorcist 12y ago
  This value is configurable per file system. It is set at install time but you can change it at will. You can set it with tune2fs using -c count or -i interval. A machine that is often rebooted might do without the interval, and vice versa. You can turn it off completely but don't do that unless you have reason to. Running a fsck regularnly brings a bit of peace of mind, especially if your file system has been through a lot of upgrades.
  - the_why_of_y 12y ago
    > You can turn it off completely but don't do that unless you have reason to. Running a fsck regularnly brings a bit of peace of mind, especially if your file system has been through a lot of upgrades. The filesystem maintainers seem to disagree: since 2011 mke2fs(8) creates new file systems without enforced fsck intervals. http://git.kernel.org/cgit/fs/ext2/e2fsprogs.git/commit/?id=3daf592646b668133079e2200c1e776085f2ffaf http://git.kernel.org/cgit/fs/ext2/e2fsprogs.git/commit/?id=...
- laumars 12y ago
  Thankfully ext4 fsck is significantly faster than ext3, which means any inconvenience for users running robust storage isn't as prolonged as it once was.

Uhm. What does "decided it was time to run fsck on my 1TB hard drive" mean? Decided how?

by olgeni 12y ago

Uhm. What does "decided it was time to run fsck on my 1TB hard drive" mean? Decided how?

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

mackwic 12y ago

Every n boot (n usually around 30) is scheduled a fsck at boot. It is more a legacy thing as ext4 is really robust. I remember checking my /home/lost+founds regularly in this time and often finding random stuff, music, documents where the i-node has been made orphan so that it doesn't belongs to any directory. Today, we have ntfs and ext4 with amazing journals which can replay most of the operation that has been made. So, when the Virtual-FS layer (the component of the kernel that map the bytes on your HDD to the logical file-tree in the exporer) detect an inconsistency it can replay and apply the correct state to the fs tree on the fly. Now that we have robust disks and robust fs, I think that this fsck at boot setting could be relaxed. However, think of the people needing saving their data with an fsck because their HDD wasn't as robust as yours. It's not an easy choice to do. You can't even base your decision on the SMART metrics as the worst HDD, the one you want to check regularly, lie to/don't implement correctly SMART.

xorcist 12y ago
This value is configurable per file system. It is set at install time but you can change it at will. You can set it with tune2fs using -c count or -i interval. A machine that is often rebooted might do without the interval, and vice versa. You can turn it off completely but don't do that unless you have reason to. Running a fsck regularnly brings a bit of peace of mind, especially if your file system has been through a lot of upgrades.
- the_why_of_y 12y ago
  > You can turn it off completely but don't do that unless you have reason to. Running a fsck regularnly brings a bit of peace of mind, especially if your file system has been through a lot of upgrades. The filesystem maintainers seem to disagree: since 2011 mke2fs(8) creates new file systems without enforced fsck intervals. http://git.kernel.org/cgit/fs/ext2/e2fsprogs.git/commit/?id=3daf592646b668133079e2200c1e776085f2ffaf http://git.kernel.org/cgit/fs/ext2/e2fsprogs.git/commit/?id=...
laumars 12y ago
Thankfully ext4 fsck is significantly faster than ext3, which means any inconvenience for users running robust storage isn't as prolonged as it once was.