Bug#764572: initramfs-tools: fails to finish booting with dirty filesystem(s)

[Arthur Marsh <arthur.marsh@internode.on.net>]

Ben Hutchings wrote on 07/12/15 09:33:
> Control: reassign -1 src:linux 3.17-1~exp1
> Control: tag -1 moreinfo
>
> On Sat, 18 Oct 2014 23:42:56 +1030 Arthur Marsh <arthur.marsh@internode.on.net> wrote:
> [...]
> > Hi, I still have the issue that with initramfstools later than 0.116 (ie
> > 0.117 and 0.118) that with the disks corrupted, the boot process would hang.
> >
> > With initramfs-tools 0.116, the boot process proceeded normally and
> > successfully run fsck on the filesystems to be mounted (the disk above
> > with a HPA was not listed in /etc/fstab to have any filesystems mounted).
> >
> > I'm not sure how to reproduce this bug without resorting to somehow
> > deliberately corrupting a filesystem and/or disk partition table.
>
> I think this must be a kernel or hardware bug that is triggered by
> slightly different behaviour in initramfs-tools.
>
> Have you seen this issue recur with more recent kernel versions?
>
> Ben.

I haven't seen this issue more recently but haven't had a dirty 
filesystem apart from those caused by a few power failures.

Part of the problem may be that the forced filesystem checks with later 
than 0.116 version of initramfs-tools do not display any visible 
progress on the console, so it's not always clear what is happening.

Is there a way to make the forced fsck progress (e.g. for the root 
filesystem) visible on the console with current versions of initramfs-tools?

Arthur.