Re: No fsck in battery mode

[Matt Foster <mattfoster@clara.co.uk>]

Quoting Sean 'Shaleh' Perry (shaleh@debian.org):
> On Monday 01 September 2003 01:04, Harry Brueckner wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > is there a way to avoid the regular fsck run (every n mounts or after m
> > days) when the laptop is in battery mode?
> >
> > I think its quite a waste of battery power for the fsck run and
> > rescheduling for the next reboot (with powersupply available) would be very
> > nice. :-)
> >
> > Any idea how to get around the fsck run?
> >
> > TIA for any ideas,
> >     Harry
> 
> So several of people have answered your question directly, however I would 
> like to caution you against this.
> 
> If fsck actually needs to run you are placing your data at considerable risk.  
> What you should consider is moving over to ext3 or another journaled fs.  For 
> the most part the journaling filesystems never need to run fsck check and are 
> MUCH better about handling sudden power loss.  Both of which are important on 
> a laptop.  The plus side is moving from ext2 -> ext3 is a simple matter of 
> running tune2fs and editing /etc/fstab to use ext3.  The stock Debian kernels 
> support ext3 and if you use your own compiling it in is trivial.
> 
> A search for 'ext3 laptop' will probably give you ideas about tuning the fs 
> further for your usage.
> 

I completly agree with what you're saying, but if you're on the move,
few things are more irritating than having to wait ten minutes for your
system to start-up. If you're like me, then you only use your laptop on
battery periodically, and at that point its normally fine to let fsck
run its course. 

Regardless of fs type(ext2 or 3, that is), fsck is run at startup, and
on my system the file system gets checked every 20something mounts
regardless. Maybe I'm missing something. 

That said, I don't think I'd dare going without fsck unless my system
was using a journalled fs, (which reminds me, for speed of checking and
repairing, XFS is excellent).

Matt

-- 
Matt Foster

mattfoster@clara.co.uk
ee1mpf@bath.ac.uk
http://www.mattfoster.clara.co.uk 
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