On Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 10:11:55AM -0700, centos.org_list@000a.com enlightened us:
know how if you do an improper shutdown and then boot up, the server prompts you to run a file system check if you press "Y" within 5 seconds? Well, this is great but sometimes not practical in remote access situations when we call our datacenter to say reboot a hang server and they have no monitor or keyboard hooked up to the system. Is there a way to have the system forced to automatically fo the filesystem check every time it boots up, if there's a need for it, ie: WITHOUT hitting "Y"?
I couldn't find the answer to this one in docs or FAQs. If I missed it, a simple pointer to the source would be of great help.
From rc.sysinit on my RHEL3 box, it looks like you can create /etc/sysconfig/autofsck. There is an AUTOFSCK_DEF_CHECK that can be set to yes to force the check and PROMPT can be set to no to skip the prompt.
All of this only happens when /.autofsck exists on the filesystem. /etc/init.d/halt removes this file when shut down properly.
Matt