hello all,
i've got a Mandrake 8.2 box (i will eventually upgrade to 9.0, so version is
not the problem). i have it running at a remote location in the philippines.
there are occasional sudden power glitches (sudden power drop, or brownout
for a few seconds, minutes or hours, etc). all filesystems are ext2.
i've had problems with some filesystems requiring a manual fsck upon
reboot (mainly the one that has /var on it, but also some other partitions
that are particularly active). the people onsite are not linux savvy and
it's unlikely that they ever will be, even after training : lack of
incentive). so having them type the root password and then do a manual
fsck on the device is not likely to work right.
what's the best way to handle this? i'd like to completely avoid the
fsck. i realize that using one of the journalled filesystems should either
help a lot or completely fix the problem. on the other hand, i've had
problems (major data loss and occasional weirdness, inability to
delete directories or files, etc) when journalled filesystems (actually,
only reiser, have not tested with ext3 or xfs) would safely get through
the reboot but then some files or directories would be inaccessible
unless a manual fsck was done (requiring yet another reboot).
what do people find is the best solution that provides stability despite
sudden power loss? i used to do update -s 1 in inittab. that worked
for a while. but maybe that was because i was there to do the fsck
when the box wouldn't reboot. it hasn't been working since i've been
away though, so maybe it was a fluke or an accident having to do with
my being around to fix things manually then.
personally, i favor reiserfs. but i'm not too happy with its robustness
in the face of sudden and random power loss (i.e., me turning off
the power button without shutting down). what filesystem types and
particular practices are recommended for boxes that are going to shut
down randomly a lot?
tiger
--
Gerald Timothy Quimpo tiger*quimpo*org gquimpo*sni-inc.com tiger*sni*ph
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