FSCK on boot

[SteveSauls]

I am new to Fedora coming from Ubuntu (Debian)

Under Ubuntu they had their OS setup to run fsck every X number of mounts.

Does Fedora do this? Does it check each mount point? How often? Where is that command at and in which file?

I see how to set it up but I don't want to overright the defaults if it is already setup.

I want to take good care of my ext4's. I know that for the most part ext4 defrags itself just by the nature of how data is written under it, unlike NTFS

Thanks in advance for the help

[jpollard]

Unfortunately, no.

You CAN fix it by using "tune2fs" (ext2/3/4) to set the maximum mount count.

By default, the fedora installer only creates filesystems with fsck disabled.

[DBelton]

as jpollard said, Fedora no longer overrides (so the devs say, anyway) the defaults when a filesystem is created, so it doesn't set the maximal mount count. This started sometime about when F17 was released, so older filesystems still have it set.

And also, as jpollard said above, you can change this using tune2fs.

To set the maximum mount count on the filesystem located at /dev/sda1 to 25:

su -
(root password)

tune2fs -c 25 /dev/sda1

To change the behavior for new filesystem created, change the default in /etc/mke2fs.conf and set enable_periodic_fsck = 1 instead of the default it has as enable_periodic_fsck = 0

Edit:
While I do agree somewhat with the devs decision on ext4 filesystems, I don't totally agree. ext4 is a journalling filesystem, and doesn't get corrupted easily, so what used to be the defaults might now be running a check too often, but I don't agree with removing it altogether. possibly a compromise would be to increase the number from what it used to put as a default (20-40) up to possibly 50-60 or so.

[jpollard]

The only problem I know of with doing fsck at boot time would be the occasional LARGE filesystem check - things with millions of files rather than thousands.

Most of the time an individual fsck should only take 5 minutes for even a large root.

But if root and home are the same filesystem AND has millions of movies/audio tracks/... then it can take a long time.

Critical filesystems (/boot and root) should be checked on a regular basis (such as reboot), but it should be up to the administrator to decide how often. Other filesystems (/home with the millions of files), might have it less frequently as they can take a long time to do - but are not critical to the system being usable by the administrator to fix things.

[SteveSauls]

Thanks for the replies. That helps alot. I found the following in the man page for tune2fs.

You should strongly consider the consequences of disabling
mount-count-dependent checking entirely. Bad disk drives,
cables, memory, and kernel bugs could all corrupt a filesystem
without marking the filesystem dirty or in error. If you are
using journaling on your filesystem, your filesystem will never
be marked dirty, so it will not normally be checked. A filesys‐
tem error detected by the kernel will still force an fsck on the
next reboot, but it may already be too late to prevent data loss
at that point.

To me this plainly says that fsck should still be run occasionally just to be safe.

"Fair Winds and Following Seas"
========== Leroy Jethro Gibbs (NCIS).

[jpollard]

I don't think even filesystem errors will force an fsck - the filesystem is marked "do not fsck". So unless you change the value, it won't.

As far as "no longer overrides"... All you have to do is an install. If the maximum mount count is -1 (was on the last install I did two days ago) it is still done. (Haven't tried a F18 install since the earlier screwups though).