I've installed LFS Linux lately and everything is great... Except the boot-time fsck script. Basically that script assumes there's someone there to push enter any time something goes wrong. I do remote administration a lot and it's not good for me to have servers hang on reboot because a "failed fsck" alert appears on the screen and requires a keystroke to continue booting.

I've fleshed out some requirements I have for a good boot-time fsck script. I'm wondering if anyone here has seen anything that comes close the the following:

*Boot script (or fsck portion of boot script) will not require a keystroke to continue under any circumstances.
*Successful boot up is top priority. No condition (including failed fsck) will prevent system from at least trying to mount / and boot.
*Errors running fsck will be logged or perhaps mailed to root.

Any ideas folks? Thanks in advance.

-The rat

Depending on what filesystems you use you will have different options for the fscking tool for that specific filesystem. e2fsck for ext2fs for instance supports the -p ("preen") that will automatically repair the filesystem without asking any questions. This flag is considered safe, and the -a flag supported by some other fsck tools and which does basically the same thing, is *not* considered safe. You may want to read up on the man pages for the fscking tools you want to use.


Håkan

This is probably not what you wanted to hear/read, but there's a reason why fsck behaves this way.

Even if the -a -A (-p -A) options are set (they probably are), fsck will ask you to make choices if it's 'confused'. The use of the -a (-p) options is regarded as 'dangerous', although just about every distro uses it.

If your system gets to the point where it cannot repair the fs by itself, it's not a good idea to ignore this and (try to) mount partions. Depending on the errors that surfaced, you will have a very unstable (disk)situation on your hands and (unrepairable) errors may be the result. Worst case: 1 (or more) partitions become unusable.

If you still want to walk this path, take a look at the fsck script and reprogram the part that handles the errorhandling (please don't...... )

Hope this helps.