Re: How can I force a full fsck on a remote system at next reboot?

[Jape Person <japers@comcast.net>]

On 03/12/2015 05:48 PM, Michael Biebl wrote:
> Am 2015-03-11 19:04, schrieb Jape Person:
> > Hi!
> >
> > Because of the deprecated use of "# touch /forcefsck" as a method of
> > forcing a file system check on the partition containin /root at boot
> > time I posted here some time ago to see if there might be another way
> > to invoke the function.
>
> touch /forcefsck is deprecated under systemd, but still supported.
>
> What sysvinit's shutdown -F does, is simply create that flag file.
> That parameter was removed from systemd's shutdown command, as its use
> is discouraged, but as said, still supported.
>
> Run "touch /forcefsck" under systemd and it will happily check the file
> systems on next boot.
>
>
> As for alternate ideas: I could think, that having update-grub generate
> an alternate grub entry, which adds fsck.mode=force to the kernel
> command line and which can be selected during boot, might be one idea.
>
>
> For remote systems, where you don't have a sideband channel like iLO,
> you could use "grub-set-default", to choose the boot entry for the next
> boot. See man 8 grub-set-default.
>
>
> Michael

Thanks, Michael.

I did realize that "touch /forcefsck" was still working, and that's what 
I'm using now. I was just trying to get with the times and use whatever 
I'm supposed to use now.

What I didn't know was that all the -F flag on shutdown was doing was to 
create that file. Funny that.

I will check the man pages for grub-set-default. It seems like the 
approach of using grub for this function on remote systems may be a 
little easier than I was thinking it would be earlier on.

BTW, do you have any thoughts as to why the recent upgrade in 
initramfs-tools would defeat the strategy I was using -- setting maximum 
mount count to zero with a line in rc.local and then invoking tune2fs to 
change it to a value of one, and then rebooting?

Thank you for the additional education.

Best,
JP