On Sun, May 21, 2017 at 05:02:20PM +0100, Peter Flynn wrote: > On 05/20/2017 06:05 PM, Chris Green wrote: > > [..] > > But you *still* haven't actually understood my problem! :-) > > Don't fret :-) It has sometimes taken me a year or more to make myself > plain... > > > In the past (i.e. previous xubuntu installations) whenever the system > > decided it was time to do a disk check automatically it would do the > > disk check *and* put a message up on the GUI to say what was > > happening. This no longer seems to happen, the system just displays > > the xubuntu logo for a *very* long time (if it's my 3Tb disk being > > checked) with no indication as to why it appears to be doing nothing. > > That's the key. The boot process no longer tells the user what's going on. > > Part of the problem is that the "old" method basically scrolled a > console log of what went into dmesg, and this was putting new users off, > who just wanted to see a logo while it booted. > No, it always used to put a message up *on the GUI*, I'm not talking about messages on the text mode console.
> Like most cosmetic changes, it has gone too far and now te > lls the user absolutely nothing at all. The correct solution is probably > some way between these two extremes. > > > Mine is a fast modern machine but it still takes a *long* time for > > fsck to check a 3Tb disk drive - like 20 or 30 minutes. > > I think the point being made earlier (which misled some readers into > thinking that fsck was the topic) was that fsck should be an extreme > rarity, something that only happens when the machine has been shut down > suddenly, or on a scheduled but very sparse timescale. Yes, 3TB will > take a long time, but for the output to be suppressed (by initrd?) is a > poor design choice and should be reversed. > The default is every 24 reboots isn't it, hardly "extreme rarity". > On 05/21/2017 01:56 PM, Joao Monteiro wrote: > > One sure way I have learnt to check if the system is hung or just > > slowly mawling whatever it is doing, is by looking at the Hard Disk > > indicator light on the machine; > > Good advice...if the system has one. Increasingly, these are no longer > being fitted. Which makes it all the more important that the boot > process tells the user what it's doing AT ALL TIMES, not just when > something long is expected. > Not really very useful, I've had hardware faults that leave the disk activity light on. -- Chris Green -- xubuntu-users mailing list xubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-users
