Hello!

Tonight something new happened when I fired up my computer. It went through the usual start up list but then a line came up, "Checking root file system, has been mounted 30 times without being checked, check forced." Then it proceeded with a percentage counter until it reached 100%. After that my computer finished loading Ubuntu Linux and all seems normal. Am I supposed to check the root file system regularly? If so, then how do I go about it? Is this a system utility like Windows Scandisk? What kind of nasty critters was this check looking for?

Thanks!
- snobird

It's a standard operation. Don't worry about it.

If you want more details try the command "man fsck"

It is just making sure all is well with your file systems.

Hello!

Will do, Thanks!

- snobird

Tell me if this is a reasonable take on this issue. The system is new , dual boot with winxp, so I frequently reboot, not every day but most.
I had received a warning this forced ck would happen, I'm thankful for the less stress. However, I was having a problem with ubunutu 6.06 internet jumping off line. It grew worse in time. Then came the forced fsck. After that the problem cleared up immediately. For quite a while there was NO problem with the internet going off.
Does this mean that fsck not only checks but repairs as well? Therefore, shouldn't I be doing this from time to time?

fsck can check and repair things. However, the "once every 30 mounts" automatic fsck only checks AFAIK. It would tell you that something is wrong, then ask you to "run fsck manually". The intent being, when you manually run it you'd review the results and decide yes/no on whether you wanted fsck to try to fix it.

It'll actually automatically perform missing inode, zero-outs, and a number of other repairs up to a point. If it runs into too many errors it'll ask for the root password, drop you to a shell and then you have to run it by hand. This is a pain, but usually doesn't lose you anything. I always thought every 30 remounts was a little overly paranoid. You can edit that if you want to using tune2fs.

Cheers,

Finegan