The subject pretty much sums it up: I have a 1.3TB ext3 filesystem which is undergoing an "fsck -y" and expect it to run for at least 3 days. The fsck process is finding lots of lost files that are being reconnected in lost+found. I don't want to stop the fsck since last time we did this it started back from scratch but I want to be able to have read access to the files on the system.

So my question is: can I mount the filesystem read-only while fsck is running? I know fsck does modify the filesystem as it runs, so will this screw things up with the ro mount? Will the OS even let us do that? Our system is RH8-based, kernel is 2.4.20-24.8bigmem, EXT2FS Library version 1.27.

TIA -- Alberto

Since you have gotton no replies, here's my best advice. At least, what I would do.

First off, I envied your 1.3TB drive until I heard of your 'issues' man, that must really suck ;-)

Anyhow, maybe it would be wise to break this drive up in to partitions.

Have the main parition (that has linux, and everything that goes with linux) on one partition.

Then, have a seperate parition (which is the bulk of the TB)

mount it as a second partition, then link to it with symbolic links

e.g.

What on earth is on that system that is taking up 1.3TB of disk space?

Do you have a million user accounts (who's accounts are in the /home/) folder?

I'd try making a symbolic link...

for instance, if you have your big parition mounted under /mnt/bigass

then

rm /home
ln -s /mnt/bigass/home /home

That should, in theory, make all files from now on written to /home actually write to the "large" partition you created.


I don't know if you get paid enough to go through the trouble to do this, but it'd probably be the best way to do it.