how to e2fschk

Forum: HD Install
Topic: how to e2fschk
started by: khurdp

Posted by khurdp on Oct. 19 2005,01:01

Hello,
how do I do a e2fschk during boot i.e. before the dev is mounted say the dev/hdax where my home etc will be mounted.

thank you,
regards,
Prasad

Posted by SaidinUnleashed on Oct. 19 2005,02:00

fsck is ran automatically at every boot. No need to run it manually.

~J.P.

Posted by khurdp on Oct. 19 2005,13:34

well it runs and reports errors but it didn't give me a chance to fix the partition it reported had errors(unless i missed) so i was thinking of using e2fsck -p. The question is where or how do i use it.

I read that even a 'shutdown -rF' forces a filesystem check. Haven't tried it yet but even if does check what I need is for it to fix the partition when there are errors non-interactively.

thank you,
Prasad

Posted by palloco on Oct. 20 2005,15:35

ext2 is the most unreliable file system. After a system crash if you cant recover your system with the mount -n ... sentence and you need to make a e2fsck, the linux installation will probably get screwed. Last time I had to do it Internet connections stopped working

Posted by khurdp on Oct. 20 2005,16:46

palloco which is a better filesytem then in your opinion?

Posted by palloco on Oct. 21 2005,16:38

Even FAT32 is better. It never corrupted the system

Posted by khurdp on Oct. 22 2005,17:15

unfortunately Pallaco FAT32 couldn't save the hard disk backup image I was trying to save! FAT32 can't save a file over 4.29GB!! After spending hours, I get this error at the last moment just because my file was just a few megs more!!

Are you suggesting I ext3 as a better filesystem?

Posted by iakudi on Oct. 23 2005,00:32

Hey....I am NOT a linux expert, I'm not even a basic user, just a very lowly noobie who has done everything the wrong way and learnt slowly.

I got a copy of TOMSRTBT disk (http://www.toms.net/rb/) and whenever I get this error (I often do as somehow my laptop goes off in hibernate mode and goes potty), I boot up with this disk. Its great as it has the main utils I want, e2fschk is one of them...so I just run it against all my partitions unless it tells me otherwise and then re-run it to double check they are clean...I then boot up as normal.

I have no idea if this is any help, but it works for my laptop

Posted by cbagger01 on Oct. 23 2005,07:52

It is a pain in the butt to set up, but if you want a better Linux filesystem, give ReiserFS version 3.x a try

DO NOT USE REISERFS 4.x it is still has bugs. ReiserFS 3.x is a fast, stable journaling filesystem.

You will need to install reiserfstools from Synaptic or apt-get

Also, it seems kinda tricky to create a DSL full hd install with reiserfs as the boot sector.

You will most likely need to create a custom miniroot filesystem image that contains the reiserfs kernel module and autoloads it in the linuxrc

But creating a secondary storage partition that is reiserfs is easy enough to do.

Good Luck.

Posted by JO+ on Oct. 24 2005,19:50

Prasad,

coming back to your original problem: how to run e2fsck on a filesystem while its mounted.
Try this one:
Boot from a DSL CD i.s.o.. from HD and enter at the boot prompt:
> dsl norestore
(should boot up a 'clean' DSL w/o interference with what's on the HD)
Now you should be able to run e2fsck on all unmounted partitions.

On filesystems: my personal experience with ext2 and ext3 is very good - in all the (rare) cases when the filesystem was corrupted (due to irregular power-off) it was kind of self-healing (via e2fsck). Both proof to be 'rock-solid'. Ext3 seems a little better with its journaling mechanism, while ext2 is better for notebooks. On notebooks ext3 won't let you put your disk to standby - there's a commit interval of 5 secs (hardcoded) that spins up your drive again immediately.

Jo

Posted by khurdp on Oct. 26 2005,01:02

Thanks for the reply JO+,
I was wondering if it was possible the way it is in other distributions - an e2fsck is run before mounting the partition. I would want it to check and fix it though.

-Prasad