[ale] fsck opinions

[Randy Ramsdell]

Lightner, Jeff wrote:
> Since ext3 is a journaled filesystem is there any reason to continue 
> doing automatic fscks of filesystems on boot?  If so why?
> 
>  
> 
> RHEL by default does fsck if rebooted if one hasn’t been done in some 
> number of days (this is configurable).   However, if it does this on a 
> system with lots of large filesystems it can take hours to boot.   This 
> causes complaints in the event of an unexpected server boot because we 
> let it run.
> 
>  
> 
> Last night I saw an issue with “sleeping on disk” on a process so of 
> course it can’t be killed and the filesystems can’t be unmounted.   I 
> think (but am not sure) that this is the only server where we disabled 
> the fsck.   I’m going to check into that but before I push back on 
> whether fsck is needed I’m just wondering what others think.
> 
>  
> 
> My co-worker says he was told in training he took that it isn’t 
> necessary.   Long ago I was told similar information for the Veritas 
> (VxFS) journaled filesystem used for HP-UX and Solaris
> 
>  

Journaling does not have anything to do with file system integrity. 
However not sure why to do fsck on every reboot. If data integrity is 
the top concern then fsck on reboot.