[Nix-dev] Re: [Nix-commits] SVN commit: nix - 13932 - eelco - nixos/trunk/boot

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hello,

Eelco Dolstra <e.dolstra at tudelft.nl>
writes:

> Good point.  On the other hand, fsck always decides at an inconvenient time that
> it has to check your whole file system right now :-)  For instance, if you
> reboot a server just once a year or so, then fsck will basically always run, so
> a reboot that should be fast will instead take a very long time...

In this particular case, I think it makes sense for e2fsck to perform
the whole check (otherwise when would it do it?).

> Still, I'd like to run fsck always, but it just takes a painfully long time on
> ext3 filesystems that haven't been shutdown cleanly.  Like several minutes on my
> laptop.  This kind of defeats the purpose of a journalling file system :-)
> Strangely, the e2fsck manpage says:
>
> "After the journal has been applied, a filesystem will normally be marked as
> clean.  Hence,  for  ext3  filesystems, e2fsck will normally run the journal and
> exit, unless its superblock indicates that further checking is required."
>
> but this is not how it actually appears to behave...

It's quite slow, but not that slow on my laptop (but I believe its hard
disk is the culprit).

FWIW, Debian GNU/Linux has `/etc/init.d/checkfs.sh', which always
invokes `fsck' except when on battery power.  Should we take it as an
indication that it's the Right Thing to do?  :-)

Thanks,
Ludo'.