Better fsck on boot ??? [General Linux]

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From: Kevin the Drummer on 6 May 2010 16:41

Every so often one of my systems will fsck at boot time. This
happens either because of a bad shutdown, which is pretty rare,
or because a partition reaches a maximum boot count allowed
between fscks, which is around 25 boots. This is a good thing
to do to maintain a healthy system, and I want to keep this
behavior.

But, now that I have some partitions in the small hundreds of GB,
fsck takes quite a while, so booting takes quite a while. Is
there a way to speed this up? I've thought about rearranging my
drive space so that only / and /home get fsck'd at boot time, and
shrinking /home to have just enough of a user's data there that
they can log in, with the rest of users' data on something like
/data which might be a big drive. But, then what? Do I fsck
/data by hand? What about unattended start-up?

What are some good solutions for fsck integrity and fast booting?

Thanks all.....

--
PLEASE post a SUMMARY of the answer(s) to your question(s)!
Unless otherwise noted, the statements herein reflect my personal
opinions and not those of any organization with which I may be affiliated.

From: The Natural Philosopher on 6 May 2010 16:56

From: Michael Black on 6 May 2010 18:27

On Thu, 6 May 2010, Kevin the Drummer wrote:

> Every so often one of my systems will fsck at boot time. This
> happens either because of a bad shutdown, which is pretty rare,
> or because a partition reaches a maximum boot count allowed
> between fscks, which is around 25 boots. This is a good thing
> to do to maintain a healthy system, and I want to keep this
> behavior.
>
> But, now that I have some partitions in the small hundreds of GB,
> fsck takes quite a while, so booting takes quite a while. Is
> there a way to speed this up? I've thought about rearranging my
> drive space so that only / and /home get fsck'd at boot time, and
> shrinking /home to have just enough of a user's data there that
> they can log in, with the rest of users' data on something like
> /data which might be a big drive. But, then what? Do I fsck
> /data by hand? What about unattended start-up?
>
> What are some good solutions for fsck integrity and fast booting?
>
I have a 160gig hard drive, bought in the summer of 2005, and still
most of it unused.

I decided from the start that I'd just partition as needed, so I
carved out about 5gigs for my installation, and another small partition
for /home. When the next release came, I carved out a new partition for
it, installed there, and then dual-booted. Same the next time, though
I really ought to delete the oldest installs.

Each time I boot, it only mounts the partition with the install, and
/home.

Eventually /home ran out of space, but most of it wasn't things I
needed all the time, so I carved out a new partition, and shifted
the accumulated junk to there. I got an MP3 player, carved out a
partition for MP3s. Got a digital camera, carved out a partition for
those. Once I accumulated enough junk to form a pattern, I'd carve
out small partitions for manuals and instructions (some downloaded, others
scanned from the paper that came with the equipment) and so on.

So when I need to transfer MP3s to my MP3 player, I mount that partition.
Just keep it mounted to do the deed, then unmount. The photos take up
space but really are mostly junk (I just saved them, rather than deal with
them at the time by properly deleting what wasn't important), so it's not
like I use that partition.

But this certainly means I don't have to have something large fsck'd every
time I boot. It also makes backups manageable, not only is each partition
relatively small, but it's much easier to save a partition of photos to a
DVD than to have a partition of miscellaneous that I just backup to DVD.
I'm not perfect, but it is better organized than if I had One Big
Partition. Once I get enough manuals to fill a blank CD or DVD, most of
that could be shuffled off, I want it around but don't really need it
handy except for a few things that I really use and need to reference
the manual. Or keep things in reasonably small collections, and use
USB memory drives or memory cards to save them, which of course has the
advantage that if it's a set of photos or MP3s I can easily plug them
into my netbook for accessing there, or into the USB plug on the front
of my DVD recorder to view or listen to things there.

I suppose there are some people who need everything on line at the same
time, someone working with really large files and needed them together,
but for most people, there is a small amount that they want and need
all the time, and the rest drops off dramatically. To some extent, we
just keep things because we have the space, dealing with it "later", a
time that never comes.

Michael

From: philo on 7 May 2010 07:23

On 05/06/2010 03:41 PM, Kevin the Drummer wrote:
> Every so often one of my systems will fsck at boot time. This
> happens either because of a bad shutdown, which is pretty rare,
> or because a partition reaches a maximum boot count allowed
> between fscks, which is around 25 boots. This is a good thing
> to do to maintain a healthy system, and I want to keep this
> behavior.
>
> But, now that I have some partitions in the small hundreds of GB,
> fsck takes quite a while, so booting takes quite a while. Is
> there a way to speed this up? I've thought about rearranging my
> drive space so that only / and /home get fsck'd at boot time, and
> shrinking /home to have just enough of a user's data there that
> they can log in, with the rest of users' data on something like
> /data which might be a big drive. But, then what? Do I fsck
> /data by hand? What about unattended start-up?
>
> What are some good solutions for fsck integrity and fast booting?
>
> Thanks all.....
>

I keep my entire installation on a relatively small drive

then keep my data on external drives...
I only connect them when I need them...

so even when fsck runs there is not much ot check

OTOH: I also turn my machine on first thing when I wake up in the
morning...so even if fsck ran for a long time...
by the time I get dressed and have breakfast etc...
the machine is all ready to go

From: wisdomkiller & pain on 7 May 2010 13:02

Kevin the Drummer wrote:

> Every so often one of my systems will fsck at boot time. This
> happens either because of a bad shutdown, which is pretty rare,
> or because a partition reaches a maximum boot count allowed
> between fscks, which is around 25 boots. This is a good thing
> to do to maintain a healthy system, and I want to keep this
> behavior.
>
> But, now that I have some partitions in the small hundreds of GB,
> fsck takes quite a while, so booting takes quite a while. Is
> there a way to speed this up? I've thought about rearranging my
> drive space so that only / and /home get fsck'd at boot time, and
> shrinking /home to have just enough of a user's data there that
> they can log in, with the rest of users' data on something like
> /data which might be a big drive. But, then what? Do I fsck
> /data by hand? What about unattended start-up?
>
> What are some good solutions for fsck integrity and fast booting?
>
Try ext4, it appears mature enough for daily usage.
You can convert your /home to ext4 as an example, but you need to run some
task afterwards as I remember (google for the procedure) to gain full
benefit.
/ has to be checked at boot time, you may split it into /, /usr, /var and
make sure they are not checked the same time - but it's tiresome to do and
of course needs a backup.
/home doesn't have to be checked that early, but before a user other than
root logs on and it has to be mounted.
Another alternative for /home and /data partitions would be xfs, which
doesn't even have a fsck at boot time but xfs_check and xfsrepair is still
available and do great work.
However, xfs can be sluggish in particular when deleting or moving lots of
small files.

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