Good call Chris! You're the best!

Well, as others have mentioned, a server should have scheduled downtimes for maintenance anyway, so the trick is to do all the things that require a reboot at the same time...
HOWEVER, do make sure you have a FULL backup first and have everything documented about what you are gong to do and also your backout/recovery plan.
Also need a test system (just a basic one) to test recovery procedures & backups ie restores.
A backup doesn't always do what you think(!)

One more question
 

Hello, can someone answer this for me: If I set the fs_passno (6th field) in fstab to zero, would the command

/sbintune2fs -c 0 /dev/mapper/VGxyzLVabc

do the same thing; that is, disable fsck? Perhaps the tune2fs disables all fsck-ing; the line-by-line changes on /etc/fstab to fs_passno only disable that line? Thanks for your input!

Restate the question
 

chrism01, good point about the reboot needed for a / fsck

Let me re-state the question of fsck. My customer (20+ years in unix) made this statement: "If you have a true journaled filesystem, you don't need fsck."

The meaning of the word "true" is open to debate, however, he makes a good point. The journal should tell the story.

What does everyone think?

Great in theory, until you get an ext3 error due to journal file corruption