topic title: Automatically Checking File System(s)
Posts: 1,028
SamK
Joined: 21 Aug 2011
#1
I've been meaning to post about this for a while now...

Although not universal across all distro's, it is quite common for distro installers to setup checking of file systems to be automatically and periodically carried out at boot up. The antiX installer does not do this although it does some of the preparatory work.

The fstab fields 6 and 7 are set up for automatic checking

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grep UUID /etc/fstab
UUID=86bab6c0-738d-4a7f-8461-cb7c10053adf / auto defaults,noatime 1 1
UUID=2f7d67c8-a67d-4468-9c41-7f97dc1dde41 /home auto defaults,noatime 1 2
In this conventional install to hard disk test system, / and /home equate to sda1 and sda2 respectively.

Surprisingly (to me at least) checking by time interval and/or number of mounts is disabled in tune2fs so it never runs automatically

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tune2fs -l /dev/sda1 | grep -i -E 'mount|check'
Last mounted on:          /
Default mount options:    user_xattr acl
Last mount time:          Thu Jul 18 18:05:41 2013
Mount count:              291
Maximum mount count:      -1
Last checked:             Wed Jun  5 13:09:14 2013
Check interval:           0 (<none>)

tune2fs -l /dev/sda2 | grep -i -E 'mount|check'
Last mounted on:          /home
Default mount options:    user_xattr acl
Last mount time:          Thu Jul 18 18:05:44 2013
Mount count:              290
Maximum mount count:      -1
Last checked:             Wed Jun  5 13:09:25 2013
Check interval:           0 (<none>)
As checking is essentially a safety measure, it might be preferable for the antiX installer to also configure tune2fs in addition to fstab. This will enable automatic checks to be run at boot up at some sensible frequency.

Having checking enabled as the default will benefit both novice and experienced users. The latter group will probably have the skills to adjust it to their own preferences. The former group may not have the skills/confidence/understanding to enable checking if it is disabled by default. In that case they may never gain any benefit.

In addition, antiX is aimed both modern and old hardware. Older kit is probably at a higher risk level than newer kit, simply due to its age. There is an extra benefit to be gained for such equipment.