unattended reboot/fsck

[Theodore Ts'o]

On Wed, Mar 16, 2005 at 09:45:06AM +1100, Tim Allen wrote:
> We've got some units in client's vehicles which are running Fedora core
> 1.  We've can log into them over ssh remotely there is no console
> attached to them.  I suspect one of them has some filesystem corruption,
> and I'd like to both force a fsck at next reboot (which I think I can do
> with shutdown -F) but I'd also like to make this fsck not require any
> human intervention.
> 
> In particular, I am concerned about the case where fsck decides that it
> need manual intervention and requests you log in for maintainance. 
> 
> How can I ensure a non-user interaction fsck that will boot normally
> (and hence put the box back into a state where a gprs connection is
> re-established and I can log in again.)

You can force the boot scripts to use the fsck -y option, but I'd also
use the logsave program so you can see what fsck had to fix --- so if
a system or appliction program/data file gets deleted, you can find
out about it and fix it, for example:

	logsave -asv /var/log/fsck.log e2fsck -y /dev/hda1

(In fact, distributions should be encouraged to use logsave by
default, since it means that any automatic fixes made by e2fsck during
the boot process are saved in a log file for later analysis.)

							- Ted