Re: Question about forcing fsck at boottime

2009-04-07 Thread Doug Hardie


On Apr 7, 2009, at 02:34, Chris Rees wrote:


\
So, the answer is NO, it does NOT cause data CORRUPTION. A simple
reboot solved it? Really, you're advocating guaranteed extended
downtime every time there's a power outage, compared with a slight
chance of a slightly longer downtime while every other time it comes
almost straight up.

Any more replies, please, read the damned question.


You had better define data corruption then.  In my book data that is  
read and gives garbage back rather than the right data is corrupt.  It  
doesn't matter if it gets "fixed" by a reboot later.  Thats only  
helpful if you happen to notice that it needs a reboot.  If all you  
are interested in is toy systems then this type of problem is of no  
interest to you.  However, for those of us who run production systems  
where clients have paid for service this is a serious issue. 
 
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Re: Question about forcing fsck at boottime

2009-04-07 Thread Chris Rees
>
> On Apr 6, 2009, at 11:12, Chris Rees wrote:
>
>> Can
>> no-one can come up with a reply either quoting a mailing list or
>> giving the circumstances when:
>>
>> a) Background fsck caused data CORRUPTION
>>
>> _and_
>>
>> b) A foreground fsck would not have done the same
>>
>> ?
2009/4/6 Doug Hardie :

> Yes.  When background FSCK first became standard I let it go that way on my
> production servers.  The first time we had a power issue that resulted in a
> shutdown of a server it tried to come back up when the power was restored.
>  I have a large number of daemons that rely on configure files and other
> information that is reasonably frequently updated.  Some of those files were
> in the process of being updated when it shut down.  As a result background
> FSCK did not get around to those files till much after the daemons were up
> and running (or trying to run).  Most of them worked ok at the beginning.
>  However after FSCK resolved the problems, the underlying files changed.
>  The daemons couldn't function at that point.
>
> While a simple reboot at that point fixed everything, that caused yet
> another outage for users.


So, the answer is NO, it does NOT cause data CORRUPTION. A simple
reboot solved it? Really, you're advocating guaranteed extended
downtime every time there's a power outage, compared with a slight
chance of a slightly longer downtime while every other time it comes
almost straight up.

Any more replies, please, read the damned question.

> I doubt that the concept of background FSCK is broken and I suspect that the 
> implementation is good too.

_Thank_ you

Chris


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Re: Question about forcing fsck at boottime

2009-04-06 Thread Doug Hardie


On Apr 6, 2009, at 11:12, Chris Rees wrote:


Can
no-one can come up with a reply either quoting a mailing list or
giving the circumstances when:

a) Background fsck caused data CORRUPTION

_and_

b) A foreground fsck would not have done the same

?


Yes.  When background FSCK first became standard I let it go that way  
on my production servers.  The first time we had a power issue that  
resulted in a shutdown of a server it tried to come back up when the  
power was restored.  I have a large number of daemons that rely on  
configure files and other information that is reasonably frequently  
updated.  Some of those files were in the process of being updated  
when it shut down.  As a result background FSCK did not get around to  
those files till much after the daemons were up and running (or trying  
to run).  Most of them worked ok at the beginning.  However after FSCK  
resolved the problems, the underlying files changed.  The daemons  
couldn't function at that point.


While a simple reboot at that point fixed everything, that caused yet  
another outage for users.  Hence, I disabled background FSCK.  There  
have been a few power issues since then and there have been no  
recovery issues with foreground FSCK other than the restart takes a  
bit longer.  This is reproducible since it happened on several  
different servers.  However, I am not about to go back and subject  
users to additional downtime when a viable workaround that avoids the  
problem exists.


I doubt that the concept of background FSCK is broken and I suspect  
that the implementation is good too.  The issue is that some services  
really should not be started till after FSCK (either variety) has  
completed.  I didn't see an easy way to do that using rc.

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Re: Question about forcing fsck at boottime

2009-04-06 Thread Chris Rees
2009/4/6 Bruce Cran :
> On Sun, 5 Apr 2009 21:40:52 +0100
> Chris Rees  wrote:
>
>> 2009/3/31 Oliver Fromme :
>> > Chris Rees  wrote:
>> >  > 2009/3/31 Wojciech Puchar :
>> >  > >
>> >  > > IMHO this background fsck isn't good idea at all
>> >  >
>> >  > Why?
>> >
>> > Google "background fsck damage".
>> >
>> > I was bitten by it myself, and I also recommend to turn
>> > background fsck off.  If your disks are large and you
>> > can't afford the fsck time, consider using ZFS, which
>> > has a lot of benefits besides not requiring fsck.
>> >
>> > Best regards
>> >   Oliver
>> >
>>
>> Right... You were bitten by background fsck, what _exactly_ happened?
>> All the 'problems' here associated with bgfsck are referring to
>> FreeBSD 4 etc, or incredibly vague anecdotal evidence. Have you
>> googled for background fsck damage? Nothing (in the first two pages at
>> least) even suggests that background fsck causes damage.
>>
>
> http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=background+fsck+corruption
>
> You'll find the first few results are about panics during background
> fsck resulting in an endless cycle of boot-panic-reboot, which don't
> occur with foreground fsck. And at least the first result is from 6.x.
>
> --
> Bruce Cran
>

So... Is the background fsck causing damage or corruption? The answer
to that is NO. It's a consequence of reading a bad directory
structure, which happened anyway.

Quoting jpd on this same issue, emphasis added:

> So far we only have *your word* for *vague problems* and *speculated causes*.
> So your best bets so far are to investigate, and lending a hand to the
> fs people with ironing out a possible bug or two.

Seriously, this conversation is full of crap, and only makes one of
FreeBSDs incredibly useful features look bad with no evidence. Can
no-one can come up with a reply either quoting a mailing list or
giving the circumstances when:

a) Background fsck caused data CORRUPTION

_and_

b) A foreground fsck would not have done the same

?

Anything else is sidestepping the question, and spreading FUD.

Anyone?

Perhaps I should CC one of the filesystem developers to get them to
reassure you all? I don't think they'd be too pleased at people saying
their design is flawed. It's not.

Chris

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Re: Question about forcing fsck at boottime

2009-04-05 Thread Bruce Cran
On Sun, 5 Apr 2009 21:40:52 +0100
Chris Rees  wrote:

> 2009/3/31 Oliver Fromme :
> > Chris Rees  wrote:
> >  > 2009/3/31 Wojciech Puchar :
> >  > >
> >  > > IMHO this background fsck isn't good idea at all
> >  >
> >  > Why?
> >
> > Google "background fsck damage".
> >
> > I was bitten by it myself, and I also recommend to turn
> > background fsck off.  If your disks are large and you
> > can't afford the fsck time, consider using ZFS, which
> > has a lot of benefits besides not requiring fsck.
> >
> > Best regards
> >   Oliver
> >
> 
> Right... You were bitten by background fsck, what _exactly_ happened?
> All the 'problems' here associated with bgfsck are referring to
> FreeBSD 4 etc, or incredibly vague anecdotal evidence. Have you
> googled for background fsck damage? Nothing (in the first two pages at
> least) even suggests that background fsck causes damage.
>

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=background+fsck+corruption

You'll find the first few results are about panics during background
fsck resulting in an endless cycle of boot-panic-reboot, which don't
occur with foreground fsck. And at least the first result is from 6.x.

-- 
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Re: Question about forcing fsck at boottime

2009-04-05 Thread ill...@gmail.com
2009/4/5 Chris Rees :
> 2009/3/31 Oliver Fromme :
>> Chris Rees  wrote:
>>  > 2009/3/31 Wojciech Puchar :
>>  > >
>>  > > IMHO this background fsck isn't good idea at all
>>  >
>>  > Why?
>>
>> Google "background fsck damage".
>>
>> I was bitten by it myself, and I also recommend to turn
>> background fsck off.  If your disks are large and you
>> can't afford the fsck time, consider using ZFS, which
>> has a lot of benefits besides not requiring fsck.
>>
>> Best regards
>>   Oliver
>>
>
> Right... You were bitten by background fsck, what _exactly_ happened?
> All the 'problems' here associated with bgfsck are referring to
> FreeBSD 4 etc, or incredibly vague anecdotal evidence. Have you
> googled for background fsck damage? Nothing (in the first two pages at
> least) even suggests that background fsck causes damage.
>
> Erik Trulsson wrote:
>> Normal PATA/SATA disks with write caching enabled (which is the default) do
>> not provide these guarantees.  Disabling write caching on will make them
>> adhere to the assumptions that soft updates make, but at the cost of a
>> severe performance penalty when writing to the disks.
>
>> In short therefore on a 'typical' PC you can fairly easily get errors on a
>> filesystem which background fsck cannot handle.
>
> What do you mean by handle? Sure, it won't fix them, but it'll at
> least detect them. The chances of actually having a problem are slim,
> anyway, and it won't cause any damage either.
>
>

This is exactly my experience: maybe three times in years
of various power failures and hardware barfs have I had the
background fsck tell me to run fsck manually.  And that is the
entire extent of the "failure".  The system was running normally,
if a bit slowly from the fsck itself, and the worst result was a
disappeared /var/db/pkg directory (which had nothing to do
with fsck being in the background on restart).


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Re: Question about forcing fsck at boottime

2009-04-05 Thread Chris Rees
2009/3/31 Oliver Fromme :
> Chris Rees  wrote:
>  > 2009/3/31 Wojciech Puchar :
>  > >
>  > > IMHO this background fsck isn't good idea at all
>  >
>  > Why?
>
> Google "background fsck damage".
>
> I was bitten by it myself, and I also recommend to turn
> background fsck off.  If your disks are large and you
> can't afford the fsck time, consider using ZFS, which
> has a lot of benefits besides not requiring fsck.
>
> Best regards
>   Oliver
>

Right... You were bitten by background fsck, what _exactly_ happened?
All the 'problems' here associated with bgfsck are referring to
FreeBSD 4 etc, or incredibly vague anecdotal evidence. Have you
googled for background fsck damage? Nothing (in the first two pages at
least) even suggests that background fsck causes damage.

Erik Trulsson wrote:
> Normal PATA/SATA disks with write caching enabled (which is the default) do
> not provide these guarantees.  Disabling write caching on will make them
> adhere to the assumptions that soft updates make, but at the cost of a
> severe performance penalty when writing to the disks.

> In short therefore on a 'typical' PC you can fairly easily get errors on a
> filesystem which background fsck cannot handle.

What do you mean by handle? Sure, it won't fix them, but it'll at
least detect them. The chances of actually having a problem are slim,
anyway, and it won't cause any damage either.

Please don't assert information or stories about being 'bitten',
without being more specific. It's meaningless and frustrating; I
didn't ask who was bitten, I asked what the problem was. Also, please
don't tell me to search the Internet without checking the search
results for relevance yourself. I've spent a long time researching
this, as have the FreeBSD devs, and they chose to make it on by
default with no warnings. From the petty things they DO warn about, I
very much doubt they'd allow something with a chance of any data
corruption slide like that.

Concrete evidence or direct links to problems with FreeBSD >6.0 ONLY
in response please. Or, no-one has proven any reason for distrust, and
all you lot are spreading is FUD.

Sorry for the rant, it's not directly aimed at any of you, just the
general assertion of 'facts' with no evidence,

Chris

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Re: Question about forcing fsck at boottime

2009-03-31 Thread RW
On Tue, 31 Mar 2009 17:36:32 +0200
Mel Flynn  wrote:

> On Tuesday 31 March 2009 14:24:11 RW wrote:
> > On Tue, 31 Mar 2009 08:15:54 +0200
> >
> > Mel Flynn  wrote:
somebody please point me in the right direction ?
> > >
> > > fsck -p is done by default (meaning, filesystems are not fully
> > > scanned if they are marked clean). If pruning fails,
> > > background_fsck is checked, which will work on UFS systems with
> > > soft updates, but is not recommended by many as it may leave some
> > > errors unchecked.
> >
> > I don't think that's quite right,  fsck -p is only done if
> > background_fsck=NO, otherwise an fsck -pF is done instead. The
> > latter does an fsck -p on filesystems that aren't eligible for
> > background checking - usually root and any none UFS filesystems.
> 
> As far as I can tell, -F -p skips clean disks (-p) and defers to
> background when possible, though the manpage doesn't exclude your or
> my theory. ENOTIME to check the source.

I wouldn't dispute that clean filesytems are skipped, it's just that you
seemed to be implying that every filesystem gets a foreground fsck -p. 
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Re: Question about forcing fsck at boottime

2009-03-31 Thread Polytropon
On Tue, 31 Mar 2009 18:57:21 +0200 (CEST), Oliver Fromme 
 wrote:
> Google "background fsck damage".
> 
> I was bitten by it myself, and I also recommend to turn
> background fsck off.  If your disks are large and you
> can't afford the fsck time, consider using ZFS, which
> has a lot of benefits besides not requiring fsck.

You can always ask yourself: "What is more important, the
boot-up time or my data?" In any case, I'd recommend to
emphasize the importance of the data, so even with larger
UFS disks, it's okay to wait a bit, but then be sure that
nothing is damaged.

Furthermore, I agree with the recommendation of ZFS. If your
hardware is good enough (which shouldn't be a problem today),
ZFS handles possible data damages much better and faster.



-- 
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>From Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...
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Re: Question about forcing fsck at boottime

2009-03-31 Thread Oliver Fromme
Chris Rees  wrote:
 > 2009/3/31 Wojciech Puchar :
 > > 
 > > IMHO this background fsck isn't good idea at all
 > 
 > Why?

Google "background fsck damage".

I was bitten by it myself, and I also recommend to turn
background fsck off.  If your disks are large and you
can't afford the fsck time, consider using ZFS, which
has a lot of benefits besides not requiring fsck.

Best regards
   Oliver

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Re: Question about forcing fsck at boottime

2009-03-31 Thread Mel Flynn
On Tuesday 31 March 2009 14:24:11 RW wrote:
> On Tue, 31 Mar 2009 08:15:54 +0200
>
> Mel Flynn  wrote:
> > On Tuesday 31 March 2009 08:05:11 manish jain wrote:
> > > I am migrating from Linux and am still learning the basics of
> > > FreeBSD. One thing that I would to carry over from my Linux days is
> > > to force an fsck on all filesystems at system startup. On Linux,
> > > this was simply a matter of editing /etc/rc.sysinit. Things seem a
> > > bit more complicated in the BSD world. Can somebody please point me
> > > in the right direction ?
> >
> > fsck -p is done by default (meaning, filesystems are not fully
> > scanned if they are marked clean). If pruning fails, background_fsck
> > is checked, which will work on UFS systems with soft updates, but is
> > not recommended by many as it may leave some errors unchecked.
>
> I don't think that's quite right,  fsck -p is only done if
> background_fsck=NO, otherwise an fsck -pF is done instead. The
> latter does an fsck -p on filesystems that aren't eligible for
> background checking - usually root and any none UFS filesystems.

As far as I can tell, -F -p skips clean disks (-p) and defers to background 
when possible, though the manpage doesn't exclude your or my theory. ENOTIME 
to check the source.
-- 
Mel
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Re: Question about forcing fsck at boottime

2009-03-31 Thread Erik Trulsson
On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 04:04:53PM +0100, Chris Rees wrote:
> On Tue, 31 Mar 2009 16:00:18 +0530
> manish jain  wrote:
> > Having bgfsck enabled is like
> > inviting a dragon to dinner when this happens.
> 
> 2009/3/31 RW :
> > If you've done a normal install, soft-updates aren't enabled on /,
> > so it will get foreground checked by default.
> >
> > If I were you I'd reboot into single user mode and do a full fsck on it.
> 
> 
> Seriously, why is everyone against background fsck? Can anyone give a
> good reason? Please?

For background fsck to work as it is supposed to, it is necessary that
only certain errors can occur on the filesystem.  Other types of errors
cannot be corrected by a background fsck.

To make sure that only the allowable errors can occur it is necessary
for soft updates to be used and working as it is supposed to.

For soft updates to work as it is supposed to the disk subsystem must
provide certain guarantees on when and in which order blocks are written.

Normal PATA/SATA disks with write caching enabled (which is the default) do
not provide these guarantees.  Disabling write caching on will make them
adhere to the assumptions that soft updates make, but at the cost of a
severe performance penalty when writing to the disks.


In short therefore on a 'typical' PC you can fairly easily get errors on a
filesystem which background fsck cannot handle.



It is also the case that background fsck relies on snapshots to work,
At least in the past snapshots had stability problems.  Things are supposed
to be better these days, but many people have long memories for these kind
of problems.






-- 

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Re: Question about forcing fsck at boottime

2009-03-31 Thread Chris Rees
On Tue, 31 Mar 2009 16:00:18 +0530
manish jain  wrote:
> Having bgfsck enabled is like
> inviting a dragon to dinner when this happens.

2009/3/31 RW :
> If you've done a normal install, soft-updates aren't enabled on /,
> so it will get foreground checked by default.
>
> If I were you I'd reboot into single user mode and do a full fsck on it.


Seriously, why is everyone against background fsck? Can anyone give a
good reason? Please?

Chris

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Re: Question about forcing fsck at boottime

2009-03-31 Thread RW
On Tue, 31 Mar 2009 16:00:18 +0530
manish jain  wrote:

> As for the reason why I want to force fsck is that it has now
> happened 3 timed that, after a clean and proper shutdown - with no
> foreign filesystems mounted, FreeBSD has complained on system restart
> (twice on a 5.x distribution I had briefly used and now once on 7.1)
> that / was not properly unmounted. Having bgfsck enabled is like
> inviting a dragon to dinner when this happens.

If you've done a normal install, soft-updates aren't enabled on /,
so it will get foreground checked by default. 

If I were you I'd reboot into single user mode and do a full fsck on it.
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Re: Question about forcing fsck at boottime

2009-03-31 Thread RW
On Tue, 31 Mar 2009 08:15:54 +0200
Mel Flynn  wrote:

> On Tuesday 31 March 2009 08:05:11 manish jain wrote:
> 
> > I am migrating from Linux and am still learning the basics of
> > FreeBSD. One thing that I would to carry over from my Linux days is
> > to force an fsck on all filesystems at system startup. On Linux,
> > this was simply a matter of editing /etc/rc.sysinit. Things seem a
> > bit more complicated in the BSD world. Can somebody please point me
> > in the right direction ?
> 
> fsck -p is done by default (meaning, filesystems are not fully
> scanned if they are marked clean). If pruning fails, background_fsck
> is checked, which will work on UFS systems with soft updates, but is
> not recommended by many as it may leave some errors unchecked.


I don't think that's quite right,  fsck -p is only done if
background_fsck=NO, otherwise an fsck -pF is done instead. The
latter does an fsck -p on filesystems that aren't eligible for
background checking - usually root and any none UFS filesystems. 

In other words you need to set background_fsck=NO to get a preen on
all filesystems.

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Re: Question about forcing fsck at boottime

2009-03-31 Thread Chris Rees
2009/3/31 manish jain :

> BTW, a lot of people who posted replies thought I was not aware that a preen
> is always executed at startup. When I said I wanted to force an fsck, I
> meant 'fsck -fy'. As for background checks, they are - in my opinion - a
> real nightmare. Even though I am just a learner on FreeBSD still, I can
> assure anyone, putting background_fsck="NO" into your rc.conf is one of the
> best things you can do.
>
> As for the reason why I want to force fsck is that it has now happened 3
> timed that, after a clean and proper shutdown - with no foreign filesystems
> mounted, FreeBSD has complained on system restart (twice on a 5.x
> distribution I had briefly used and now once on 7.1) that / was not properly
> unmounted. Having bgfsck enabled is like inviting a dragon to dinner when
> this happens.
>

Sorry, but I have to disagree. The filesystem that FreeBSD uses (UFS
to some, FFS to others) has a feature known as 'snapshots', something
alien to people in the Linux world. What this means, is that one can
take a 'snapshot' of a drive's state (somewhat like a versioning tag),
and mount, dump, OR fsck it. The point of a background fsck is that
the SNAPSHOT is fsck'd, and only if there is a problem (which there
usually isn't, due to soft-updates meaning that data are rarely lost
on power loss) does fsck require write access to the volume in
question.

This is also why you can dump a live filesystem in FreeBSD.

Just to reiterate something said a thousand times, there is NOTHING
WRONG with background fscks, and just because something doesn't work
well for GNU/Linux doesn't mean it doesn't work with FreeBSD. There
are many differences, after all.

Chris

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Re: Question about forcing fsck at boottime

2009-03-31 Thread manish jain

Bruce Cran wrote:

On Tue, 31 Mar 2009 11:35:11 +0530
manish jain  wrote:


Hi,

I am migrating from Linux and am still learning the basics of
FreeBSD. One thing that I would to carry over from my Linux days is
to force an fsck on all filesystems at system startup. On Linux, this
was simply a matter of editing /etc/rc.sysinit. Things seem a bit
more complicated in the BSD world. Can somebody please point me in
the right direction ?



I found this from a post last year:

echo '/sbin/fsck -y -f' >> /etc/rc.early



Hi Bruce/Everyone else,

Thanks for the rc.early tip.

BTW, a lot of people who posted replies thought I was not aware that a 
preen is always executed at startup. When I said I wanted to force an 
fsck, I meant 'fsck -fy'. As for background checks, they are - in my 
opinion - a real nightmare. Even though I am just a learner on FreeBSD 
still, I can assure anyone, putting background_fsck="NO" into your 
rc.conf is one of the best things you can do.


As for the reason why I want to force fsck is that it has now happened 3 
timed that, after a clean and proper shutdown - with no foreign 
filesystems mounted, FreeBSD has complained on system restart (twice on 
a 5.x distribution I had briefly used and now once on 7.1) that / was 
not properly unmounted. Having bgfsck enabled is like inviting a dragon 
to dinner when this happens.


--
Thank you and Regards
Manish Jain
invalid.poin...@gmail.com
+91-99830-62246

NB : Laast year I kudn't spell Software Engineer. Now I are won.
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Re: Question about forcing fsck at boottime

2009-03-31 Thread Chris Rees
2009/3/31 Wojciech Puchar :

>
> IMHO this background fsck isn't good idea at all

Why?

Chris
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Re: Question about forcing fsck at boottime

2009-03-31 Thread Daniel Marsh

On Tue, 31 Mar 2009 15:01:37 +0800, Bruce Cran  wrote:


On Tue, 31 Mar 2009 11:35:11 +0530
manish jain  wrote:



Hi,

I am migrating from Linux and am still learning the basics of
FreeBSD. One thing that I would to carry over from my Linux days is
to force an fsck on all filesystems at system startup. On Linux, this
was simply a matter of editing /etc/rc.sysinit. Things seem a bit
more complicated in the BSD world. Can somebody please point me in
the right direction ?



I found this from a post last year:

echo '/sbin/fsck -y -f' >> /etc/rc.early




You could also replace rc.early with rc.local if you want it to run later  
in the boot process.



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Re: Question about forcing fsck at boottime

2009-03-31 Thread Wojciech Puchar
i don't know why you do want to FORCE it every boot. in FreeBSD it's not 
needed.


but you may add
background_fsck="NO"

to check filesystems at boot when needed, not delayed.

IMHO this background fsck isn't good idea at all
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Re: Question about forcing fsck at boottime

2009-03-31 Thread Bruce Cran
On Tue, 31 Mar 2009 11:35:11 +0530
manish jain  wrote:

> 
> Hi,
> 
> I am migrating from Linux and am still learning the basics of
> FreeBSD. One thing that I would to carry over from my Linux days is
> to force an fsck on all filesystems at system startup. On Linux, this
> was simply a matter of editing /etc/rc.sysinit. Things seem a bit
> more complicated in the BSD world. Can somebody please point me in
> the right direction ?
> 

I found this from a post last year:

echo '/sbin/fsck -y -f' >> /etc/rc.early

-- 
Bruce Cran
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Re: Question about forcing fsck at boottime

2009-03-30 Thread Rudy

manish jain wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I am migrating from Linux and am still learning the basics of FreeBSD.
> One thing that I would to carry over from my Linux days is to force an
> fsck on all filesystems at system startup. On Linux, this was simply a
> matter of editing /etc/rc.sysinit. Things seem a bit more complicated
> in the BSD world. Can somebody please point me in the right direction ?

man fsck
Traditionally, fsck is invoked before the file systems are mounted and all
 checks are done to completion at that time.  If background checking is
 available, fsck is invoked twice.  It is first invoked at the
traditional
 time, before the file systems are mounted, with the -F flag to do
check-
 ing on all the file systems that cannot do background checking.

Also, you can set this in /etc/rc.conf
fsck_y_enable="YES"
if you want to automatically run 'fsck -y' ... handy for remote servers.

Oh, and if you use ZFS, there is no such thing as 'fsck'.  That file
system never needs fsck.  :)  If you want less fsck headaches on a big
disk system, make the large partion (/home ?) ZFS.
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zfs
 http://wiki.freebsd.org/ZFSQuickStartGuide

Rudy

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Re: Question about forcing fsck at boottime

2009-03-30 Thread Mel Flynn
On Tuesday 31 March 2009 08:05:11 manish jain wrote:

> I am migrating from Linux and am still learning the basics of FreeBSD.
> One thing that I would to carry over from my Linux days is to force an
> fsck on all filesystems at system startup. On Linux, this was simply a
> matter of editing /etc/rc.sysinit. Things seem a bit more complicated in
> the BSD world. Can somebody please point me in the right direction ?

fsck -p is done by default (meaning, filesystems are not fully scanned if they 
are marked clean). If pruning fails, background_fsck is checked, which will 
work on UFS systems with soft updates, but is not recommended by many as it 
may leave some errors unchecked.

If background_fsck is set to NO, things will stop and operator intervention is 
required, unless one has set fsck_y_enable. All this logic is implemented in 
/etc/rc.d/fsck.

The rc.conf(5) manpage and related rc(8), rcorder(8) and rc.subr(8) are a good 
read when migrating.
-- 
Mel
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Question about forcing fsck at boottime

2009-03-30 Thread manish jain


Hi,

I am migrating from Linux and am still learning the basics of FreeBSD. 
One thing that I would to carry over from my Linux days is to force an 
fsck on all filesystems at system startup. On Linux, this was simply a 
matter of editing /etc/rc.sysinit. Things seem a bit more complicated in 
the BSD world. Can somebody please point me in the right direction ?


--
Thank you and Regards
Manish Jain
invalid.poin...@gmail.com
+91-99830-62246

NB : Laast year I kudn't spell Software Engineer. Now I are won.
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