[Gllug] /etc/fstab entries

[John Winters]

On Fri, 2006-04-14 at 09:36 +0100, John G Walker wrote:
> I'm a bear of little brain, so can anyone explain to me what fs_freq
> and fs_passno are (or, better still, where I could find out). I just
> set them to zero only knowing that this works.
> 
> I infer from Steve's post that this may not be a problem if everything
> is sat behind a firewall (as is the case on my system), but, now a
> query has been raised in my mind, I'd like to know,

Put one idea out of your mind - the presence or absence of firewall has
absolutely nothing to do with the values in these fields.

fs_freq is used by the "dump" command to decide when to dump the
relevant partition.  If you don't use dump in your backup strategy then
the value of this field is irrelevant.  I suppose it's possible that
other backup tools also use this field but I don't know of any.  Check
the documentation of whatever tool you use.

fs_passno allows you to control the *order* in which different
partitions will be fsck'ed at boot time (assuming they need it).
Setting this value to 0 will prevent file systems from being fsck'ed.

It is normal to set passno to 1 for your root file system and then set
the rest of them to 2, unless you have a particular reason for wanting
them done in a different order.  Fsck will apply an intelligent ordering
to the partitions, within the constraints that you have set.  File
systems with the same passno will be checked simultaneously, provided
they are on different physical disks.  If two with the same passno are
on the same physical disk then they will be done one after the other.
When it's done all the partitions with a passno of 2, it will move on to
those with a passno of 3, etc.

Swap partitions, nfs partitions etc should have their passno set to 0.

HTH
John

-- 
John Winters, Wallingford, Oxon, England
i = (free (NULL); i++);

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