RE: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
A little while ago there was a discussion here about fsck running at boot, and the program AutoFsck. The author of AutoFsck just contacted me and asked me what his next step should be. I don't have any official standing in the Ubuntu dev community, so I'm just going to forward his message out here in the hopes that it will get opened up for a more comprehensive discussion. Evan PS I also sent him a link to join this list, so hopefully he'll be able to contribute to the discussion. I too was contacted by a Jonathon Musther. But the email I received was different. It reads... Hi Chris Jones I wouldn\'t normally use this mailing list for anything other than announcements about new versions of AutoFsck. But I have been inundated with people requesting information on how to promote AutoFsck, and get it (or something with the functionality) into the Ubuntu distribution. I\'ve been trying to do this myself for a long time, but have not got very far. To this end I have set up a petition at the bottom of the page: http://wiki.ubuntu.com/AutoFsck Please read it and consider adding your name. Also feel free to email me if you have any comments, suggestions etc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Kind Regards Jonathan Musther I'm not quite sure why I received it either. I suspect it's just because I'm a member of the AutoFsck Mailing List. -- Chris Jones [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
On Sun, 2007-12-02 at 22:55 +, (=?utf-8?q?=60=60-=5F-=C2=B4=C2=B4?=) -- Fernando wrote: Dane , you can manually bypass this by using tune2fs, and disable the fsck on your server. Yes, indeed this will do the trick. But it requires knowledge of some quite arcane utilities -- not usually what the casual user has --, and bypasses the basic issues: 1. fsck takes an inordinate long time for large filesystems; We distribute Ubuntu with the installation by default in one single monolithic filesystem (and most other distributions will do the same). Of old this was no biggie, since the disks were (relatively) small. But, nowadays, we usually get harddrives in excess of 100G. Very few of us (based on my experience) will partition the HD. I have had issues on Ubuntu on this (I *do* run many partitions), with software updates putting critical system utilities in /usr/[s]bin instead of /[s]bin -- which causes some rather bad errors on boot (/usr is a mount point on my systems) 2. a generic ~30 mounts per check is too short an interval. Although this is probably good enough for desktop systems, it breaks fast on laptops. I, for example, boot my laptop at least twice a day -- so, on my personal case, I will have a forced check in (usually) less than 2 weeks time. If I were to be running a single fs, it would take about 25 minutes for it to complete. Fortunately for me, since I broke my install in many filesystems, not all of them get done at the same time. [as an example, I have seem my wife get out of her laptop in disgust when such a check started. And, of course, blast me for that :-)] 3. taking out the check is potentially dangerous in the long run. A direct question here is: how long can such a check be postponed? This question has not yet been answered, and we have people either disabling (via tune2fs or friends), or putting in some arbritary values. What we need is some consensus on how to deal with it. -x-x-x-x-x-x- I am guessing what we would need here is a reanalysis of how the checks are done, and what could be changed to minimise the impact of such checks. I would expect changes in the filesystems also. Perhaps a way would be a routine to prompt the user for a check next reboot, and be increasingly more vocal if the user keeps on postponing the check: * This system has run for xxx (days|months|boots|whatever) * without a FS check. Do you want this check performed * next boot? * * [ ] Yes [ ] No [ ] postpone for now And then the routine would set a flag to be read by something next boot. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
Couldnt fsck be run periodically in read-only mode during normal operation (ie. while the disks are mounted), and if an error is detected ask for a restart so fsck will be run during boot-up? I am not aware of how fsck operates, so this may not be possible. On Tue, 2007-12-04 at 08:40 -0600, HggdH wrote: On Sun, 2007-12-02 at 22:55 +, (=?utf-8?q?=60=60-=5F-=C2=B4=C2=B4?=) -- Fernando wrote: Dane , you can manually bypass this by using tune2fs, and disable the fsck on your server. Yes, indeed this will do the trick. But it requires knowledge of some quite arcane utilities -- not usually what the casual user has --, and bypasses the basic issues: 1. fsck takes an inordinate long time for large filesystems; We distribute Ubuntu with the installation by default in one single monolithic filesystem (and most other distributions will do the same). Of old this was no biggie, since the disks were (relatively) small. But, nowadays, we usually get harddrives in excess of 100G. Very few of us (based on my experience) will partition the HD. I have had issues on Ubuntu on this (I *do* run many partitions), with software updates putting critical system utilities in /usr/[s]bin instead of /[s]bin -- which causes some rather bad errors on boot (/usr is a mount point on my systems) 2. a generic ~30 mounts per check is too short an interval. Although this is probably good enough for desktop systems, it breaks fast on laptops. I, for example, boot my laptop at least twice a day -- so, on my personal case, I will have a forced check in (usually) less than 2 weeks time. If I were to be running a single fs, it would take about 25 minutes for it to complete. Fortunately for me, since I broke my install in many filesystems, not all of them get done at the same time. [as an example, I have seem my wife get out of her laptop in disgust when such a check started. And, of course, blast me for that :-)] 3. taking out the check is potentially dangerous in the long run. A direct question here is: how long can such a check be postponed? This question has not yet been answered, and we have people either disabling (via tune2fs or friends), or putting in some arbritary values. What we need is some consensus on how to deal with it. -x-x-x-x-x-x- I am guessing what we would need here is a reanalysis of how the checks are done, and what could be changed to minimise the impact of such checks. I would expect changes in the filesystems also. Perhaps a way would be a routine to prompt the user for a check next reboot, and be increasingly more vocal if the user keeps on postponing the check: * This system has run for xxx (days|months|boots|whatever) * without a FS check. Do you want this check performed * next boot? * * [ ] Yes [ ] No [ ] postpone for now And then the routine would set a flag to be read by something next boot. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
On Tue, Dec 04, 2007 at 08:40:25AM -0600, HggdH wrote: I am guessing what we would need here is a reanalysis of how the checks are done, and what could be changed to minimise the impact of such checks. I would expect changes in the filesystems also. You're right - a deeper analysis is needed. And this issue has at least one official blueprint: https://blueprints.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/prompt-for-fsck-on-shutdown https://wiki.ubuntu.com/AutoFsckspec You can try AutoFsck: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/AutoFsck Neal McBurnett http://mcburnett.org/neal/ signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
On Tue, 2007-12-04 at 08:03 -0700, Neal McBurnett wrote: You're right - a deeper analysis is needed. And this issue has at least one official blueprint: https://blueprints.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/prompt-for-fsck-on-shutdown https://wiki.ubuntu.com/AutoFsckspec You can try AutoFsck: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/AutoFsck Autofsck looks like it would do the trick, IMHO. It would eliminate the nastiness of a 10+ minute boot time, and still go a long way to protect against filesystem corruption. --Dane -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
Autofsck does look like the way to go. Especially nice would be the option
to run a manual fsck, although that might already be an option ('a test can
be run' or is that something else?). I'm definitely in favour of this.
On Dec 4, 2007 11:50 AM, Dane Mutters [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
On Tue, 2007-12-04 at 08:03 -0700, Neal McBurnett wrote:
You're right - a deeper analysis is needed. And this issue has at
least one official blueprint:
https://blueprints.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/prompt-for-fsck-on-shutdown
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/AutoFsckspec
You can try AutoFsck:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/AutoFsck
Autofsck looks like it would do the trick, IMHO. It would eliminate the
nastiness of a 10+ minute boot time, and still go a long way to protect
against filesystem corruption.
--Dane
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Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
On Monday 22 October 2007 01:51:03 Dane Mutters wrote: I think that there is an occasional need to check the file system for errors, but I think that it might work better as an optional, but highly recommended thing. Here's another case in point: I have been working to set up an Ubuntu-based Asterisk phone server at my workplace. For this application, having to wait even 1 minute for the system to reboot (if necessary) is barely tolerable, but if it ever has to be restarted for any reason, and then insists on spending the next 5 minutes doing a fsck, thus rendering the business phone-less, that would surely make my employers very frustrated. I'm sure this has already been discussed, but I wish to add my opinion to that of others who believe that a better solution is needed. Surely, fsck is a really good idea, but for certain uses of Ubuntu, it's really not practical. I'm sure that something else can be devised. Keep up the good work. --Dane Dane , you can manually bypass this by using tune2fs, and disable the fsck on your server. -- BUGabundo :o) (``-_-´´) http://Ubuntu.BUGabundo.net Linux user #443786GPG key 1024D/A1784EBB My new micro-blog @ http://BUGabundo.net signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
On Sun, 2007-12-02 at 22:55 +, (=?utf-8?q?=60=60-=5F-=C2=B4=C2=B4?=) -- Fernando wrote: On Monday 22 October 2007 01:51:03 Dane Mutters wrote: I think that there is an occasional need to check the file system for errors, but I think that it might work better as an optional, but highly recommended thing. Here's another case in point: I have been working to set up an Ubuntu-based Asterisk phone server at my workplace. For this application, having to wait even 1 minute for the system to reboot (if necessary) is barely tolerable, but if it ever has to be restarted for any reason, and then insists on spending the next 5 minutes doing a fsck, thus rendering the business phone-less, that would surely make my employers very frustrated. I'm sure this has already been discussed, but I wish to add my opinion to that of others who believe that a better solution is needed. Surely, fsck is a really good idea, but for certain uses of Ubuntu, it's really not practical. I'm sure that something else can be devised. Keep up the good work. --Dane Dane , you can manually bypass this by using tune2fs, and disable the fsck on your server. While I personally know how to use tune2fs to this effect, not everybody else does. Also, it's rather easy to forget to set this. I don't know if there is a better solution that running it at boot (I realize that it's a bad idea to run fsck on a mounted drive), but it would be nice to at least be able to cancel the check (assuming there's not another solution that can run on a mounted FS). --Dane -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
I'm going to add an anecdote to this thread why running fsck (at least in textmode) at startup is bad. Some good friends of mine use ubuntu on their HTPC. The connected HDTV can't display the text mode under which the fsck runs, this results in a blue screen during the whole operation. As these folks aren't any computer whizzes they belive the computer has hanged itself as no plausible explanation is given from the computer. Efter a brief explanation from me this, of course, is no problem, but I'm sure these people aren't the only one with a similar experience. Regards, Erik Andrén 2007/10/17, Phillip Susi [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Onno Benschop wrote: I am subscribed to the list, there is no need to send this to me directly. Fair enough. I will remove you for now, but if you wish to not get such replies regularly, you should set your Reply-To: header to point to the mailing list. I have personal experience where a modern journalling file system (ext3) does *not* maintain integrity. I have now had three cases where the journal corrupted for no particular reason, causing the kernel to remount my drive read-only. A read-only and non-destructive read-write test failed to uncover any problems. My point was, and it still stands, theoretically a file-system maintains its integrity, in practice it cannot. fsck is the tool that catches the difference between theory and practice. It sounds like in your case it was the running kernel that noticed the problem ( which in all likelihood was simply an IO error that happened while the kernel tried to update the journal ), not the auto fsck at 30 mounts. In any case, such errors occur only for the VAST minority of users, so why should everyone be penalized? -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
I think that there is an occasional need to check the file system for errors, but I think that it might work better as an optional, but highly recommended thing. Here's another case in point: I have been working to set up an Ubuntu-based Asterisk phone server at my workplace. For this application, having to wait even 1 minute for the system to reboot (if necessary) is barely tolerable, but if it ever has to be restarted for any reason, and then insists on spending the next 5 minutes doing a fsck, thus rendering the business phone-less, that would surely make my employers very frustrated. I'm sure this has already been discussed, but I wish to add my opinion to that of others who believe that a better solution is needed. Surely, fsck is a really good idea, but for certain uses of Ubuntu, it's really not practical. I'm sure that something else can be devised. Keep up the good work. --Dane -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
Onno Benschop wrote: I am subscribed to the list, there is no need to send this to me directly. Fair enough. I will remove you for now, but if you wish to not get such replies regularly, you should set your Reply-To: header to point to the mailing list. I have personal experience where a modern journalling file system (ext3) does *not* maintain integrity. I have now had three cases where the journal corrupted for no particular reason, causing the kernel to remount my drive read-only. A read-only and non-destructive read-write test failed to uncover any problems. My point was, and it still stands, theoretically a file-system maintains its integrity, in practice it cannot. fsck is the tool that catches the difference between theory and practice. It sounds like in your case it was the running kernel that noticed the problem ( which in all likelihood was simply an IO error that happened while the kernel tried to update the journal ), not the auto fsck at 30 mounts. In any case, such errors occur only for the VAST minority of users, so why should everyone be penalized? -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
Onno Benschop wrote: My point is this, an fsck is an 'out of band' check, that is, a check that doesn't rely on other things. It means that while theoretically a file-system maintains its integrity, in practice it cannot. fsck is a useful tool that needs to run regularly and every 30 mounts is pretty reasonable in my opinion. And that is where I completely disagree with you. The reason journals were added to ext3 was to avoid the need to fsck after a dirty unmount. If the fs does not need checked after a dirty unmount, why does it need checked after 30 clean mounts? In practice, in my experience, modern journaling filesystems DO maintain integrity. Also see the plethora of servers out there running ext3 with hundreds of days of uptime. They NEVER run fsck because they are never rebooted, and they suffer no data loss. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
On 17/10/07 01:33, Phillip Susi wrote: Onno Benschop wrote: My point is this, an fsck is an 'out of band' check, that is, a check that doesn't rely on other things. It means that while theoretically a file-system maintains its integrity, in practice it cannot. fsck is a useful tool that needs to run regularly and every 30 mounts is pretty reasonable in my opinion. And that is where I completely disagree with you. The reason journals were added to ext3 was to avoid the need to fsck after a dirty unmount. If the fs does not need checked after a dirty unmount, why does it need checked after 30 clean mounts? In practice, in my experience, modern journaling filesystems DO maintain integrity. Also see the plethora of servers out there running ext3 with hundreds of days of uptime. They NEVER run fsck because they are never rebooted, and they suffer no data loss. I am subscribed to the list, there is no need to send this to me directly. I have personal experience where a modern journalling file system (ext3) does *not* maintain integrity. I have now had three cases where the journal corrupted for no particular reason, causing the kernel to remount my drive read-only. A read-only and non-destructive read-write test failed to uncover any problems. My point was, and it still stands, theoretically a file-system maintains its integrity, in practice it cannot. fsck is the tool that catches the difference between theory and practice. -- Onno Benschop Connected via Optus B3 at S31°54'06 - E115°50'39 (Yokine, WA) -- ()/)/)()..ASCII for Onno.. |?..EBCDIC for Onno.. --- -. -. --- ..Morse for Onno.. ITmaze - ABN: 56 178 057 063 - ph: 04 1219 - [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
How about running fsck only when the file system was not properly unmounted the last time it was online? (crash, power fail) Assuming the file system is robust and bug-free, this should be adequate. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
On Wed, 2007-10-10 at 12:02 +0200, mike corn wrote: How about running fsck only when the file system was not properly unmounted the last time it was online? (crash, power fail) Assuming the file system is robust and bug-free, this should be adequate. For this to be true, you need another assumption: All hardware is absolutely reliable which just is not the case. If a bit flip occurs due to bad RAM, a bad IDE cable, chipset problems or whatever, wrong values might be written to disk even with perfectly bug-free software. Such errors often don't have lethal impact from the beginning so that the user might not notice until its already too late. Having a scan from time to time might show up slight file system inconsistencies and raise attention to the user. Hinting a user to make backups after fsck had discovered errors on a regular scan (as opposed to a scan after a crash or power failure) would also be nice. However, I strongly agree that the user should be given the option to abort the scan. This also implies that the user is being informed on the splash screen first and that he knows what is actually about to happen. Just having the progress bar not moving for some time and going to console after the timeout occurs might look quite disturbing for inexperienced users. Regards, Christof Krüger -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
On 10/10/2007, Christof Krüger [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: However, I strongly agree that the user should be given the option to abort the scan. Me too. This whole fsck business is a really ugly hole in the Ubuntu experience; first the fact that it can't be aborted, and secondly the fact that it isn't integrated with a splash screen. I understand that there are technical issues behind this which I don't have the knowledge to address properly, but the target must absolutely be to solve this problem, rather than make excuses from it. Has someone created a specification about the issue? -- Matthew East http://www.mdke.org gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
On 10/10/2007 Christof Krüger wrote: However, I strongly agree that the user should be given the option to abort the scan. This also implies that the user is being informed on the splash screen first and that he knows what is actually about to happen. Problem is that users will just skip the test, and get tired of having to skip the test each time. Perhaps an alternative would be to check only a part of the filesystem (e.g. randomly choosen) each time, but I don't know enough about filesystem (even though I should :) ) to say it's impossible or feasible. Vincenzo -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
A partial check doesn't make sense with the current fsck tools AFAIK. We should do a full filesystem check if anything, and if a user decides to abort it, it's his choice. There should be a graphical or otherwise easily accessible way of re-touching the /forcefsck flag so that users can choose which bootup to do a check on. Another idea is on LVM-capable systems to take a snapshot of important filesystems while they are unmounted or read-only then fsck the snapshot device as a background task. If any serious errors are detected in the snapshot, then schedule an uncancelable boot scan. I agree with everyone who says that the current fsck experience is a blemish to Ubuntu's general user-friendliness, and also that we should not be entirely removing the regular fsck as it catches hardware irregularities and potential software bugs with ext3. John On Wed, Oct 10, 2007 at 01:25:54PM +0200, Vincenzo Ciancia wrote: Problem is that users will just skip the test, and get tired of having to skip the test each time. Perhaps an alternative would be to check only a part of the filesystem (e.g. randomly choosen) each time, but I don't know enough about filesystem (even though I should :) ) to say it's impossible or feasible. Vincenzo pgp05N5f7HUAd.pgp Description: PGP signature -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
John Dong wrote: I agree with everyone who says that the current fsck experience is a blemish to Ubuntu's general user-friendliness, and also that we should not be entirely removing the regular fsck as it catches hardware irregularities and potential software bugs with ext3. When was the last time you had a fsck find and fix errors? I have two machines that have been running reiserfs for 2 years now and have never had to fsck, and on the rare occasion that I am bored and feel like forcing one, nothing wrong is found. The vast majority of users will be in this same boat. The vast majority of the time there simply is no reason to fsck. You might suggest that they do it every once in a while, but most people will just say no, and the only result will almost certainly be that they spend less time waiting to boot up. Windows runs on the same potentially flakey hardware that Linux does, and it doesn't routinely perform a chkdsk. Most people are quite happy with this and only need to chkdsk when something goes wrong and they suspect filesystem damage. The argument about random hardware corruption does not hold up in the face of this evidence. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
I completely like the LVM idea, as I was saying on IRC a bit ago, that would really be an elegant system. LVM up root, and whatever other chosen disks, and safely check that in the background (possibly a nice notification icon even?) and pop up a ping box when an error is found (the level of error it goes into rigorous fsck mode being user configurable, but shipping with a default of some sort, tbd later) this would REALLY cut down on issues... The only discrepancy here is what happens when the disk is corrupted to a high degree and we try to boot it? Fairly simple yet also complex response to that. It would have to work similar to bulletproof X... though obviously on a lower level. We could flag to a safe location to fsck on boot. Or even have a special grub entry that fscks automatically, that would be interesting. The first being more elegant, though rather hard... it would require us to have a safe-zone to store this sort of small information. And we have no idea what part of the FS/Disk could be bad. Possibly a combination of the two might be in order. Honestly it is a tad complex but it is REALLY a cool idea. We should write up a formal spec and see where it goes, still needs some development, but it's really promising In my opinion. John Dong wrote: A partial check doesn't make sense with the current fsck tools AFAIK. We should do a full filesystem check if anything, and if a user decides to abort it, it's his choice. There should be a graphical or otherwise easily accessible way of re-touching the /forcefsck flag so that users can choose which bootup to do a check on. Another idea is on LVM-capable systems to take a snapshot of important filesystems while they are unmounted or read-only then fsck the snapshot device as a background task. If any serious errors are detected in the snapshot, then schedule an uncancelable boot scan. I agree with everyone who says that the current fsck experience is a blemish to Ubuntu's general user-friendliness, and also that we should not be entirely removing the regular fsck as it catches hardware irregularities and potential software bugs with ext3. John On Wed, Oct 10, 2007 at 01:25:54PM +0200, Vincenzo Ciancia wrote: Problem is that users will just skip the test, and get tired of having to skip the test each time. Perhaps an alternative would be to check only a part of the filesystem (e.g. randomly choosen) each time, but I don't know enough about filesystem (even though I should :) ) to say it's impossible or feasible. Vincenzo -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
The main roadblock in my mind is that few people use LVM as the main installer doesn't support it. Also, I have no idea how sane this idea is in terms of the abilities of ext3. It's an interesting solution but probably too insane to ship in a distro. Something like autofsck is easier/less risky to implement. Since ext3 has a fsck-on-boot-if-dirty flag, we also have to deal with some sort of usplash hook for fscking during bootup too. On Wed, Oct 10, 2007 at 03:49:45PM -0400, Bryan Haskins wrote: Honestly it is a tad complex but it is REALLY a cool idea. We should write up a formal spec and see where it goes, still needs some development, but it's really promising In my opinion. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
On 11/10/07 02:36, Phillip Susi wrote: When was the last time you had a fsck find and fix errors? I have two machines that have been running reiserfs for 2 years now and have never had to fsck, and on the rare occasion that I am bored and feel like forcing one, nothing wrong is found. That would be two days ago, before that, a month ago. Hmm, might need a new HDD :( My point is this, an fsck is an 'out of band' check, that is, a check that doesn't rely on other things. It means that while theoretically a file-system maintains its integrity, in practice it cannot. fsck is a useful tool that needs to run regularly and every 30 mounts is pretty reasonable in my opinion. The user interface it presents is a different conversation altogether. Predictability and cancellation would be good ideas to implement. I should also point out that I've been working away at a 'dirty flag' check for the dosfsck tool, but thus far an implementation has eluded me. (That and severe time constraints while I get ready for the onslaught on the World Solar Challenge web site :) -- Onno Benschop Connected via Optus B3 at S31°54'06 - E115°50'39 (Yokine, WA) -- ()/)/)()..ASCII for Onno.. |?..EBCDIC for Onno.. --- -. -. --- ..Morse for Onno.. ITmaze - ABN: 56 178 057 063 - ph: 04 1219 - [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing - and current approach does not work very well in detecting defects!
Jan Claeys wrote: The main reason (IMO) why defrag is not useful (anymore) is that for ages there hasn't been any (guaranteed) correlation between hardware order and software order of sectors on a disk. Defragmenting disks might actually fragment them more on a fysical level, and thus cause slow-downs. And in some cases (fysically) fragmented sectors might be faster to read/write than non-fragmented ones (I used a custom, partially self-written, diskette formatting program to do exactly that under MS-DOS!). So, any defrag program would require help from the hard disk's firmware to be really efficient (and AFAIK no firmware supports this). No, the only time the logical sectors become physically out of order are when defect remapping has taken place. Sequential reads of sectors in order are still the fastest way to access the disk, so access to files which are not fragmented is faster than files which are. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing - and current approach does not work very well in detecting defects!
Op maandag 08-10-2007 om 13:16 uur [tijdzone -0400], schreef Phillip
Susi:
Jan Claeys wrote:
But I think a similar API could be used to mark move bad sectors or
lost sectors, and that's more related to this discussion...
As I said, there is no need to make such an effort because ext rarely
becomes fragmented enough to worry about. The fact that the defrag
package has not really been maintained in 10 years shows that there is
no strong need for an offline defrag, let alone an online one.
The main reason (IMO) why defrag is not useful (anymore) is that for
ages there hasn't been any (guaranteed) correlation between hardware
order and software order of sectors on a disk. Defragmenting disks
might actually fragment them more on a fysical level, and thus cause
slow-downs. And in some cases (fysically) fragmented sectors might be
faster to read/write than non-fragmented ones (I used a custom,
partially self-written, diskette formatting program to do exactly that
under MS-DOS!). So, any defrag program would require help from the hard
disk's firmware to be really efficient (and AFAIK no firmware supports
this).
But, what I was thinking about was similar atomic operations that allow
_other_ filesystem cleaning tasks to be done while a filesystem is in
use (r/w). ('fsck' might be an example.)
I understand these don't exist now, but they might be a good idea for
future filesystems or filesystem versions... :)
--
Jan Claeys
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Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing - and current approach does not work very well in detecting defects!
Op woensdag 03-10-2007 om 15:35 uur [tijdzone -0400], schreef Phillip Susi: Jan Claeys wrote: About doing live fsck defrag on a rw filesystem, IIRC Windows NT has a system API for doing e.g. atomic swap 2 sectors operations; does 'linux', or any of the filesystem drivers for it, support something like that? I think XFS or JFS supports online defragmenting, but no other work has been done in that area due to lack of need. Even the offline defrag package has not been maintained for the last 10 years due to lack of interest. When you don't have a silly problem with fragmentation, there is no motivation to solve the non problem. Ext2/ext3 suffer from fragmentation too, when available disk space gets low enough. But I think a similar API could be used to mark move bad sectors or lost sectors, and that's more related to this discussion... -- Jan Claeys -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing - workarounds and future fixes
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 The ext4 file system seems to be addressing some of these issues, by allowing online defragmentation and introducing a much faster e2fsck. Details at https://ols2006.108.redhat.com/2007/Reprints/mathur-Reprint.pdf There was a tray applet that monitored how many reboots you had left and let you postpone the fsck on boot. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=295262 or http://www.debianadmin.com/bonager-the-boot-scan-manager-for-your-ubuntu-desktop.html However, a comment in the forum says it's no longer developed. I tried it a while back and it worked fine, but I've got a fast laptop and didn't bother to install it when I upgraded. Cheers, ~Jason -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFHBRdhL3hj+Vqlm0oRAkBUAJ9VpwTXX9WoEXjFm5xPaESaBY4hRACeN2rO 9CltBioOwo3X4gppJz14zAs= =4h78 -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing - and current approach does not work very well in detecting defects!
Jan Claeys wrote: I'm not an Ubuntu developer, but if 'badblocks' looks for hardware defects, it's mostly useless on most hard disks in use these days. The HDD firmware does internal bad block detection replacement (using spare blocks on the disk reserved for that purpose). So if you can detect any bad blocks using a software check, it means that your hard disk is almost dead and should be replace ASAP (like, rather today than tomorrow). It can only remap the block on a write, not a read, but yea, smartmontools is a better method to monitor for defects. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing - and current approach does not work very well in detecting defects!
Op dinsdag 02-10-2007 om 13:56 uur [tijdzone -0400], schreef Phillip Susi: Jan Claeys wrote: I'm not an Ubuntu developer, but if 'badblocks' looks for hardware defects, it's mostly useless on most hard disks in use these days. The HDD firmware does internal bad block detection replacement (using spare blocks on the disk reserved for that purpose). So if you can detect any bad blocks using a software check, it means that your hard disk is almost dead and should be replace ASAP (like, rather today than tomorrow). It can only remap the block on a write, not a read, Which means it might be useful as an emergency solution while you're waiting for the new disks to arrive. but yea, smartmontools is a better method to monitor for defects. Indeed, 'smartmontools' for hardware-defects, fsck for filesystem-defects. About doing live fsck defrag on a rw filesystem, IIRC Windows NT has a system API for doing e.g. atomic swap 2 sectors operations; does 'linux', or any of the filesystem drivers for it, support something like that? -- Jan Claeys -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
On 10/1/07, Markus Hitter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Am 01.10.2007 um 00:16 schrieb Anthony Yarusso: How would it work in the background after your drives are mounted? Did you ever use WinXP and run chkdsk from the command line? It warns you that it can't *correct* errors (a reboot is needed if errors are found), but it can at least *detect* errors on a mounted and active partition (even the boot partition, in case you wondered). Why should Linux not be able to copy this behavior? I'm not aware wether current fsck supports it, but nothing technical stops you to _check_ a drive while being mounted r/w. In the (hopefully rare) case you find some issue you'd have to ask the user to take action, i.e. reboot the machine. Exactly! Regards, Waldemar Kornewald -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
On 10/1/07, Luke Yelavich [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: So what happens when users install a distro that either doesn't check their filesystem regularly, or attempts to check in background, which can't be completed due to system activity etc, and they loose their data? I'd be thinking that having the filesystem periodically checked would be a good thing, to ensure my data stays in tact. Look, this check doesn't just take three seconds. Nobody would complain in that case. On some machines it's taking an awful 40min!!! I see this check twice a month. I lose an incredible amount of productivity because of this check. Actually, I'd lose less time by creating regular backups and restoring a backup in case of a problem. Millions of XP machines are running just fine without this check. Do you think any desktop user will try to understand why this check is needed? Would you accept your car needing a 20min self-check before you can drive, especially if you're late? Would you even care why this check is needed if you see that some other car doesn't do this check or has a more efficient checking method? Seriously, the solution that Ubuntu has chosen is just an ugly hack because nobody wanted to implement automatic checks in the background, but there are quite a few people (as you can also see in the bug reports) who don't like this situation. In any serious company that cares about its users and the user experience the solution would be very simple: Either it's implemented correctly or not at all. Regards, Waldemar Kornewald -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
On 10/1/07, Waldemar Kornewald [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 10/1/07, Luke Yelavich [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: So what happens when users install a distro that either doesn't check their filesystem regularly, or attempts to check in background, which can't be completed due to system activity etc, and they loose their data? I'd be thinking that having the filesystem periodically checked would be a good thing, to ensure my data stays in tact. Look, this check doesn't just take three seconds. Nobody would complain in that case. On some machines it's taking an awful 40min!!! I see this check twice a month. I lose an incredible amount of productivity because of this check. Actually, I'd lose less time by creating regular backups and restoring a backup in case of a problem. Millions of XP machines are running just fine without this check. Do you think any desktop user will try to understand why this check is needed? Would you accept your car needing a 20min self-check before you can drive, especially if you're late? Would you even care why this check is needed if you see that some other car doesn't do this check or has a more efficient checking method? Seriously, the solution that Ubuntu has chosen is just an ugly hack because nobody wanted to implement automatic checks in the background, but there are quite a few people (as you can also see in the bug reports) who don't like this situation. In any serious company that cares about its users and the user experience the solution would be very simple: Either it's implemented correctly or not at all. Hi, I too find these checks quite annoying, but if they are needed, that's ok I can live with them. However, what I would like to do would be to be able to postpone them when I really don't have time to wait they're done. Sometimes I'm just busy when I arrive at work, and that's really annoying when I boot my laptop and see that I've reached the fatal 30th mount. Maybe an easy solution would be to do something like: - Your file system has been mounted more than 30 times and it needs to be checked for errors. Press Enter to check your file system now. X seconds left before normal boot, without checking your file system. - With a correctly chosen timeout (10 seconds?), I could boot almost as usual when I'm too busy to start fsck, and perform it later on a subsequent boot. What do you think? -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
Waldemar Kornewald wrote the following on 01.10.2007 00:08 -snip- If you want fsck then you should be able to turn it on, but please don't assume that anyone else wants to have fsck enabled, by default. As many people have reported, it takes awfully long to boot with fsck and that's incredibly annoying. -snip- Regards, Waldemar Kornewald once upon the time in a galaxy far away some wise man said: There are two parts of computer users. The first one do backups, and second ones never had a harddisc failure. guess what i do backups and fore sure i never will missing fsck to tell me that erverything is OK with my drive. but as i told you do what you want @home. -- Thilo key: 0x4A411E09 -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
On Mon, 2007-10-01 at 20:13 +0200, Thilo Six wrote: There are two parts of computer users. The first one do backups, and second ones never had a harddisc failure. Here's a variation on your theme. There are three types of people in the world: Those who don't do backups. Those who do backups. Those who do backups and test them. -- Sitsofe | http://sucs.org/~sits/ -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
Sitsofe Wheeler wrote the following on 01.10.2007 21:10 -snip- Here's a variation on your theme. There are three types of people in the world: Those who don't do backups. Those who do backups. -snip- you seem to miss the important point second ones never had a harddisc failure. fsck is not the only way to determine the health of your drive, but it is a good inidicator. Those who do backups and test them. Thank you for the flowers. ;) -- Thilo key: 0x4A411E09 -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
Reordering this mail to put the important topic on top. On 9/28/07, Markus Hitter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: IIRC, in sleep-to-disk mode you can even pull the power plug without enforcing booting. Yep, sleep-to-disk is the best mode if you care about your environment, but if you want to suggest that we all use standby/sleep-to-disk to get around fsck checks then that's silly because it doesn't really solve the actual problem and it is no solution that works automatically for everyone. Also, both modes aren't stable enough, at least on laptops (but it would be great if sleep-to-disk were the default because it's much more comfortable for the end-user). If the HDD needs to be checked, regularly, then this needs to be done in background instead of at boot time. If it doesn't really need to be checked very frequently or at all then the check needs to be turned off, by default. What do the Ubuntu developers say (sorry, I don't know who of you is a dev)? Will this discussion lead to anything or are we discussing just for fun? Am 28.09.2007 um 00:40 schrieb Caroline Ford: We are strongly being advised NOT to leave things on standby here as it's bad for the environment. I'm pretty sure it takes less energy to have a modern computer in standby for a week or two than to boot the machine and to restore all the applications running (think about 30 documents open on my average desktop). Not to mention about an hour of work to do the latter. That's plain wrong. Permanent standby (e.g., 20h/day) needs many times more energy than booting your computer and opening your documents. You can easily calculate for yourself: 6W for standby when monitor turned off, 180W under medium load. FYI, in Germany, for example, we have multiple power plants running solely to keep electronic devices in standby mode! Regards, Waldemar Kornewald -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
On 27/09/2007, Conrad Knauer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: As a temporary cosmetic work-around, something like forcing the output into a pseudo-window on the boot screen (so that it doesn't look like the whole thing crashed to command line) might be nice, e.g.: u b u n t u [X][X][ ][ ][ ][ ] |checking files | |=== 21%| CK If the default behaviour of fsck can't/won't be changed (and even if it is), I'd like to see this sort of thing implemented. It would be good to give the user an option of cancelling the check (press any key to cancel sort of thing), and then either prompt again at next bootup, or give the user a way of further delaying the check (tune2fs ?). Martin -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
On 30/09/2007, Martin Peeks [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 27/09/2007, Conrad Knauer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: As a temporary cosmetic work-around, something like forcing the output into a pseudo-window on the boot screen (so that it doesn't look like the whole thing crashed to command line) might be nice, e.g.: This is dealt with in this spec: https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/usplash-polish https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UsplashPolishSpec Aaron -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
Waldemar Kornewald wrote: Are there any alternatives? Here are two examples: one alternative is fsck at shut down. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/AutoFsck sam tygier -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
On Thu, 2007-09-27 at 09:46 +0200, Waldemar Kornewald wrote: I once reported a bug about this, but Justin Wray suggested that I discuss this on a mailing list, first. Curious. I filed a bug about disabling periodic fscks (as most other operating system like Windows 95 and above along with OSX don't do them) over on https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/partman-ext3/+bug/3581 back in October 2005. I am starting to wonder if this was the correct thing to do... -- Sitsofe | http://sucs.org/~sits/ -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
Sitsofe Wheeler wrote the following on 30.09.2007 19:14 On Thu, 2007-09-27 at 09:46 +0200, Waldemar Kornewald wrote: I once reported a bug about this, but Justin Wray suggested that I discuss this on a mailing list, first. Curious. I filed a bug about disabling periodic fscks (as most other operating system like Windows 95 and above along with OSX don't do them) over on https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/partman-ext3/+bug/3581 back in October 2005. I am starting to wonder if this was the correct thing to do... umount the partition and *then* run: $ sudo tune2fs -c 0 -i 1m /dev/hdXY that will reduce fsck period to once a month, regarless of bootcount. But do that on your on. Distribution wide i can´t think off any good reason to disable fsck at all. -- Thilo key: 0x4A411E09 -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
On 9/30/07, Thilo Six [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: umount the partition and *then* run: $ sudo tune2fs -c 0 -i 1m /dev/hdXY that will reduce fsck period to once a month, regarless of bootcount. But do that on your on. Distribution wide i can´t think off any good reason to disable fsck at all. If you want fsck then you should be able to turn it on, but please don't assume that anyone else wants to have fsck enabled, by default. As many people have reported, it takes awfully long to boot with fsck and that's incredibly annoying. From my own experience, the average person will react very negatively to fsck increasing their boot time by 10-40min, especially if XPVista (how about other Linux distros or OS X?) don't do this annoying check. Seriously, why should we accept being disturbed by fsck? It's not like we couldn't do anything about it. There are two solutions that work for everyone: turn fsck off by default or make it work in the background. Regards, Waldemar Kornewald -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Waldemar Kornewald wrote: On 9/30/07, Thilo Six [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: umount the partition and *then* run: $ sudo tune2fs -c 0 -i 1m /dev/hdXY that will reduce fsck period to once a month, regarless of bootcount. But do that on your on. Distribution wide i can´t think off any good reason to disable fsck at all. If you want fsck then you should be able to turn it on, but please don't assume that anyone else wants to have fsck enabled, by default. As many people have reported, it takes awfully long to boot with fsck and that's incredibly annoying. From my own experience, the average person will react very negatively to fsck increasing their boot time by 10-40min, especially if XPVista (how about other Linux distros or OS X?) don't do this annoying check. Seriously, why should we accept being disturbed by fsck? It's not like we couldn't do anything about it. There are two solutions that work for everyone: turn fsck off by default or make it work in the background. Regards, Waldemar Kornewald How would it work in the background after your drives are mounted? -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFHACBHKlAIzV4ebxoRApTjAJ4z5tXKLcAgTJZ9V2lkRpuBKF45PgCgiM21 XPoG9Kfujqym/XfXpoxL8Ss= =ydRI -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
2007/9/27, Waldemar Kornewald [EMAIL PROTECTED]: ... -- Are there any alternatives? Here are two examples: Use SMART (AFAIK, Vista does that). SMART is hardware- and not filesystem dependent. Besides, the implementation of SMART differs wildly from each hard-drive manufacturer. Take care, Erik Run fsck read-only (even on mounted partitions) as a low-priority process in the background when the system is *idle* and report to the user only when an error is found, then requiring a reboot and full system check on boot-up. Regards, Waldemar Kornewald -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
On 9/27/07, Erik Andrén [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 2007/9/27, Waldemar Kornewald [EMAIL PROTECTED]: ... -- Are there any alternatives? Here are two examples: Use SMART (AFAIK, Vista does that). SMART is hardware- and not filesystem dependent. Besides, the implementation of SMART differs wildly from each hard-drive manufacturer. Isn't a hardware defect the main reason a file system can be corrupted without a crash? There can be serious FS bugs, but aren't those very rare, anyway? What else could lead to FS corruption? Regards, Waldemar Kornewald -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Thu, Sep 27, 2007 at 06:03:32PM EST, Waldemar Kornewald wrote: Isn't a hardware defect the main reason a file system can be corrupted without a crash? There can be serious FS bugs, but aren't those very rare, anyway? What else could lead to FS corruption? The hardware can be in top knotch, and problems can still occurr with filesystems. Many a time, I've seen an fsck finish on a root filesystem, and have to reboot the system due to changes, even when there have been no crashes on the system since the filesystem was created. If you really want to turn them off, or at least reduce their freqquency, you can use the tune2fs command to do so, but I personally would leave things as they are. - -- Luke Yelavich GPG key: 0xD06320CE (http://www.themuso.com/themuso-gpg-key.txt) Email MSN: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Jabber: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFG+2y1jVefwtBjIM4RAhv0AJ0ZaeSLJyLoLx2OqU5hNCiXO8aqQACg1Fp7 UzXrnw0CP5jKP63iMD6fr/M= =JClM -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
On 9/27/07, Luke Yelavich [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, Sep 27, 2007 at 06:03:32PM EST, Waldemar Kornewald wrote: Isn't a hardware defect the main reason a file system can be corrupted without a crash? There can be serious FS bugs, but aren't those very rare, anyway? What else could lead to FS corruption? The hardware can be in top knotch, and problems can still occurr with filesystems. Many a time, I've seen an fsck finish on a root filesystem, and have to reboot the system due to changes, even when there have been no crashes on the system since the filesystem was created. If you really want to turn them off, or at least reduce their freqquency, you can use the tune2fs command to do so, but I personally would leave things as they are. What about my alternative suggestion? It would still run fsck, but at the same time be less annoying or not disturbing at all. Regards, Waldemar Kornewald -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
hi, Am Donnerstag, den 27.09.2007, 10:49 +0200 schrieb Waldemar Kornewald: What about my alternative suggestion? It would still run fsck, but at the same time be less annoying or not disturbing at all. not wsure if you ever ran fsck manually, but you have to unmount the partition you check or at least mount it readonly ... so no matter how far you will background it you wont be able to work while it runs ... ciao oli signature.asc Description: Dies ist ein digital signierter Nachrichtenteil -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
Hi, On 9/27/07, Oliver Grawert [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Am Donnerstag, den 27.09.2007, 10:49 +0200 schrieb Waldemar Kornewald: What about my alternative suggestion? It would still run fsck, but at the same time be less annoying or not disturbing at all. not wsure if you ever ran fsck manually, but you have to unmount the partition you check or at least mount it readonly ... so no matter how far you will background it you wont be able to work while it runs ... I'm sure it is technically possible. It might mean changes to fsck or even the kernel, but, for example, under Windows I can run chkdsk read-only even on a read-write mounted FS. I can even defragment that FS while it's mounted read-write. IMHO, this is a highly desired improvement to the current behavior which draws users away (friends who saw fsck on my laptop called Linux stupid and asked me why I don't just use Windows). Regards, Waldemar Kornewald -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing - why not badblocks?
On 27/09/2007 Oliver Grawert wrote: What about my alternative suggestion? It would still run fsck, but at the same time be less annoying or not disturbing at all. not wsure if you ever ran fsck manually, but you have to unmount the partition you check or at least mount it readonly ... so no matter how far you will background it you wont be able to work while it runs ... If the point of running that (annoying, indeed) fsck is to check for disk defect, why not running badblocks instead? It can do a read-only check on a mounted filesystem. You could modify that so that it runs only when other processes are not accessing the disk. In any case, having a journaled filesystem by default and blocking users while they might be in a hurry is not pleasant. At least leave the possibility of interrupting the check. Suppose you are at a conference, and it starts checking your disk, and you start your talk late for that reason. What will other people think about ubuntu? Is this good publicity? Vincenzo -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
On 9/27/07, Waldemar Kornewald [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: the current behavior which draws users away (friends who saw fsck on my laptop called Linux stupid and asked me why I don't just use Windows). As a temporary cosmetic work-around, something like forcing the output into a pseudo-window on the boot screen (so that it doesn't look like the whole thing crashed to command line) might be nice, e.g.: u b u n t u [X][X][ ][ ][ ][ ] |checking files | |=== 21%| CK -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing - why not badblocks?
I'd just like to point out that it seems to take 40 minutes to scan a 500 GB volume! On Thu, 2007-09-27 at 11:05 +0200, Vincenzo Ciancia wrote: On 27/09/2007 Oliver Grawert wrote: What about my alternative suggestion? It would still run fsck, but at the same time be less annoying or not disturbing at all. not wsure if you ever ran fsck manually, but you have to unmount the partition you check or at least mount it readonly ... so no matter how far you will background it you wont be able to work while it runs ... If the point of running that (annoying, indeed) fsck is to check for disk defect, why not running badblocks instead? It can do a read-only check on a mounted filesystem. You could modify that so that it runs only when other processes are not accessing the disk. In any case, having a journaled filesystem by default and blocking users while they might be in a hurry is not pleasant. At least leave the possibility of interrupting the check. Suppose you are at a conference, and it starts checking your disk, and you start your talk late for that reason. What will other people think about ubuntu? Is this good publicity? Vincenzo -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
* [Waldemar Kornewald] Isn't a hardware defect the main reason a file system can be corrupted without a crash? There can be serious FS bugs, but aren't those very rare, anyway? What else could lead to FS corruption? SMART only catches hard drive defects. Some other things that (I think more frequently) can lead to file system corruption, even on a system that seems to be running just fine, are: - Small RAM errors - Overheating components - Overclocked components - Software bugs (kernel/VFS/filesystem driver) - Hardware bugs SMART won't help you there. Only fsck will. Currently, I believe there is a check during boot to see if the system is running on battery power, and if so, delay the fsck for 10 more mounts or until the system is booted with mains power again. Other suggestions have been to have a (kernel?) thread/process in the background constantly checking your filesystem when the system is otherwise idle. The same type of process for background defragging has also been suggested. However, I am not aware of anyone ever implementing a workable prototype of such a system for Linux. Øystein -- Ebg13 arire tbrf bhg bs fglyr.. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
And how about using ReiserFS by default, or any other journaled filesystem that doesn't require fsck to run regularly? I'm using reiser3, and I hadn't noticed that fsck was run by default on startup until a friend of mine installed Ubuntu with standard settings (i.e. with ext3). From Wikipedia: ReiserFS is the default file system on the Slackware http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slackware, Xandros http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xandros, Yoper http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YOPER, Linspire http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linspire, GoboLinux http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GoboLinux, Kurumin Linux http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurumin_Linux, FTOSX and Libranet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libranet Linux distributions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_distribution. ReiserFS was the default file system in Novell http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise until Novell decided to move to ext3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ext3 on October 12 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_12, 2006 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006^ for future releases. Why did Novell went back to ext3? -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
On Thu, 27 Sep 2007 16:17:43 -0400 Phillip Susi [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Scott Kitterman wrote: ReiserFS is effectively unmaintained. I've switched from ReiserFS to Ext3 for my installs too. While it works well now, bitrot seems inevitable. Scott K Note: This has nothing to do with an legal issues the developers have. The Reiser devs have been focused on ResierFS4 for quite some time. The point though, is still valid; reiserfs doesn't bother forcing a disk check every n mounts, so why does ext3 still do this? I think these days the kernel is bug free enough and hardware is generally reliable enough that we can drop the forced fsck by default. Dunno. I was just answering your Why not ReiserFS? question. Scott K -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
Am 27.09.2007 um 22:17 schrieb Phillip Susi: Scott Kitterman wrote: ReiserFS is effectively unmaintained. I've switched from ReiserFS to Ext3 for my installs too. While it works well now, bitrot seems inevitable. Scott K Note: This has nothing to do with an legal issues the developers have. The Reiser devs have been focused on ResierFS4 for quite some time. The point though, is still valid; reiserfs doesn't bother forcing a disk check every n mounts, so why does ext3 still do this? Not an answer, but I feel people should stop thinking about doing anything essential at boot/shutdown time. Right now, many people switch their computers on and off regularly, but the days of such habits are counted. Think about Laptops and PCs with a reliable standby mode. Think about PDAs, Phones, TV boxes. When not used, they go into standby mode. Some of them don't even feature something like off. They all get booted once or twice a year, so the point in time before mounting next to never happens. If you want to do maintenance, you have to do it on the running system. Markus, writing from a laptop with about 2 months uptime. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Dipl. Ing. Markus Hitter http://www.jump-ing.de/ -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
Waldemar Kornewald wrote: Why did the Ubuntu developers choose that particular behavior (fsck every 21st or 30th boot), anyway? IMHO, a much more accurate measurement would be: how much time has the FS spent in the mounted state since the last FS check? Because that is how ext has been since dinosaurs roamed the earth. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
We are strongly being advised NOT to leave things on standby here as it's bad for the environment. Caroline On Thu, 2007-09-27 at 23:46 +0200, Markus Hitter wrote: Am 27.09.2007 um 22:17 schrieb Phillip Susi: Scott Kitterman wrote: ReiserFS is effectively unmaintained. I've switched from ReiserFS to Ext3 for my installs too. While it works well now, bitrot seems inevitable. Scott K Note: This has nothing to do with an legal issues the developers have. The Reiser devs have been focused on ResierFS4 for quite some time. The point though, is still valid; reiserfs doesn't bother forcing a disk check every n mounts, so why does ext3 still do this? Not an answer, but I feel people should stop thinking about doing anything essential at boot/shutdown time. Right now, many people switch their computers on and off regularly, but the days of such habits are counted. Think about Laptops and PCs with a reliable standby mode. Think about PDAs, Phones, TV boxes. When not used, they go into standby mode. Some of them don't even feature something like off. They all get booted once or twice a year, so the point in time before mounting next to never happens. If you want to do maintenance, you have to do it on the running system. Markus, writing from a laptop with about 2 months uptime. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Dipl. Ing. Markus Hitter http://www.jump-ing.de/ -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
Am 28.09.2007 um 00:40 schrieb Caroline Ford: We are strongly being advised NOT to leave things on standby here as it's bad for the environment. I'm pretty sure it takes less energy to have a modern computer in standby for a week or two than to boot the machine and to restore all the applications running (think about 30 documents open on my average desktop). Not to mention about an hour of work to do the latter. IIRC, in sleep-to-disk mode you can even pull the power plug without enforcing booting. Markus - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Dipl. Ing. Markus Hitter http://www.jump-ing.de/ -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
