Filesystem used other than ext3.

[Stephen C. Tweedie]

Hi,

On Tue, 2004-09-07 at 12:41, Mike Burger wrote:

> Most of the journaling filesystems, other than ext3, don't require fsck in 
> the event of an improper shutdown, which speeds up the boot process in 
> such a case.

Ext3 doesn't require fsck, either.  It just does a short journal replay,
but it can do that either in kernel space or in user space. 

The main reason why you *want* to do a fsck at boot time is not actually
to do a fs recovery; it's to check the fs error state flags in case
there are problems (due to software or hardware errors) that normal
recovery can't deal with, and that require a full fsck.

The way it works is that if the running ext3 detects a serious problem
on disk, it can abort the fs, turn it readonly, and set a flag in the
journal indicating why the fs was aborted.  Then on reboot, fsck sees
the flag and forces a full fs check.

If you're sure you never have bad hardware --- you'll never get a bad
sector, etc --- then you can disable the fsck with ext3 and you'll never
notice anything, because the kernel will just do the recovery itself at
mount time.

--Stephen