Matt Hyclak wrote:
On Thu, Apr 07, 2005 at 07:30:20AM -0500, Mike Kercher enlightened us:
If a problem is encountered during the fsck, will the system automagically fix it?
By default, it doesn't appear to. However, it does get additional options from the /fsckoptions file, so you could give it the -p there to automatically fix problems. That can be dangerous, though...I've had entire filesystems end up in lost+found doing that :-)
While that's true (you can lose data), most people when confronted with the "should I correct this?" dialog during fsck simply hit "yes" anyway. I've been using Linux since the early 90's and unix since the mid-80's and still find the output of fsck to be somewhat cryptic.
If you want the machine to come up in an automated fashion (a headless system) then I don't really see any other way of accomplishing this. Personally, when I have a machine that's wedged or doesn't survive a reboot, I consider that a cue to visit (or send someone else to visit) the datacenter to find out why. Relying on some of the "technicians" I've seen in various datacenters in NYC/LDN/SFO/HK to troubleshoot the system just isn't an option. Troubleshooting generally means repeatedly leaning on the power button until it either recovers by itself or completely melts down. 8-)
Cheers,
C