fsck it!

The Linux utility fsck checks and repairs Linux file systems. A few days ago, in the face of threatening weather, I shut down my Linux box to prevent the system from going down "the hard way" (i.e., having power cut suddenly...yeah, I know, that's what UPSs are for, but I digress...).

Just as the machine was about to shut itself off, the power went out. Later, when I started it, there were a number of messages to the effect that no fsck.ext2 information could be found. A few discreet inquiries revealed that - somehow - I'd lost fsck and would have to reinstall it.

That was easy.

A few days later, after rebooting the machine, Linux dumps me into single user mode, ready to do repairs after finding file system errors during startup. I get itchy, seeing as how maybe the file system got munged because fsck wasn't there doing its job.

Then I recall that the utility never had a chance to do its job, since this was the first time I'd rebooted since reinstalling it.

A careful examination of the rc.sysinit script (which showed an innocuous date) finally led me to comment out a bunch of code that appeared to repeat a file system check. I reasoned that what was going on was the following: The file systems were being checked (I could see that from the output of the startup file), and then later, as the messages were complaining about partitions already being mounted, it could only be because another check was being attempted.

Sweet success!

(Just remember this the next time you install e2fsprogs using RPM!)

Cheers...