[Gllug] /etc/fstab entries

[Steve Nelson]

On 4/14/06, Chris Ebenezer <chriseb at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/14/06, John Winters <john at sinodun.org.uk> wrote:
> > 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.
>
> Hi John -- Can  you point to a scenario where it actually makes a
> practical difference in terms of the ext2/ext3 fs being fscked or not?

An ext2/ext3 filesystem will be checked periodically based on number
of mounts or time elapsed, unless specifically disabled with tune2fs. 
However why wait for 180 days / 28 mounts?  Isn't the point of boot
time fsck that it's a health/sanity check?  Taking this argument to
its logical conclusion, why not put a value of 0 into /etc/fstab for
every ext2/ext3 filesystem, since it'll get fscked eventually?  No-one
does that, and I doubt its because no-one's ever thought about it
before.  On a production system which might only  get rebooted once
every two or three months for essential maintainence, patches, kernel
upgrades etc, it would take years before the filesystem was checked. 
Ok, sure, if the kernel detects corruption, it will force a check, but
that's not what I'm thinking of.  Surely it is best practice to have a
filesystem check of a heavily used filesystem after every reboot,
rather than when its already hosed, or once a decade?

S.
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