[xubuntu-users] No indication of disk checks at login

[Chris Green]

On Sun, May 21, 2017 at 10:37:09PM +0800, lukshuntim at gmail.com wrote:
> On Sunday, May 21, 2017 01:06 AM, Chris Green wrote:
> > On Fri, May 19, 2017 at 09:28:08PM +0100, Peter Flynn wrote:
> > > On 05/19/2017 01:46 PM, Chris Green wrote:
> > > > I just want the warning message in the GUI to appear when it *does*
> > > > run so that I won't think something has gone wrong and hung the
> > > > system boot process.
> 
> Hi Chris,
> 
> [snapped]
> 
> The fsck'ing has been moved into initrd. There's some information in this
> discussion.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/initramfs-tools/+bug/1619753
> 
> If the filesystem is clean, it shouldn't take much time. If it did take a
> long time, fsck is thinking there's sth wrong with the root filesystem and
> tries to repair it.
> 
This isn't what happens,  'clean' is just a flag as I understand it
which tells fsck that there's nothing to do.  Every time the system is
booted the flag is checked and, if it says 'clean' then fsck is almost
instantanous.  All that 'clean' really means is that the system was
shut down properly.

However every 24 boots (or whatever has been set in the configuration)
a full in depth check of the filesystem is forced regardless of the
status of the 'clean' flag.  This takes a long time on big disks.

You can get manually get a full check done by using the '-f' flag, I've just
tried this on a 1Tb disk on my system:-

    root at esprimo# time fsck -f /dev/sdd1
    fsck from util-linux 2.27.1
    e2fsck 1.42.13 (17-May-2015)
    Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
    Pass 2: Checking directory structure
    Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity
    Pass 4: Checking reference counts
    Pass 5: Checking group summary information
    /dev/sdd1: 776386/61054976 files (16.5% non-contiguous),
    102311510/244190208 blocks

    real    12m11.863s
    user    1m33.116s
    sys     0m14.392s
    root at esprimo# 

As you can see even on a *clean* 1Tb disk an *actual* fsck check takes
twelve minutes.


> If you want the behaviour to change, for example, echoing a message, maybe
> you want to file a bug report against the initramfs-tools package.
> 
I just want the original behaviour back!

-- 
Chris Green