fsck inadequacies

[Kent Stewart]

On Friday 26 November 2004 03:16 pm, Mardoc Inc wrote:
> I run a FreeBSD system at a remote site. It costs me over $4000 to
> visit the site (northern arctic).
>  It, along with some other equipment, runs off 2 x 50 kW diesel
> generators which are swapped by a mechanic once per week.  The
> swap-over takes less than a minute. The computer runs
> off a UPS, which easily holds its charge during the swap.

All of the UPSes that I have used come with a warning that the battery 
will eventually need to be replaced. Are you sure the UPS is still 
good?

>
> But, unlike the other windows systems that run up there, the FreeBSD
> system seems incredibly
> prone to disk corruption. Often the system will not reboot, and hangs
> while it asks for a file check.
> I can't do that remotely - it has to be a person.
>  I frequently need to run fsck, and that does not always work.  It is
> hard to instruct a diesel mechanic on such matters from such a
> distance. "fsck -y"
>  usually does not work either.
>

I had a power outage 4 days ago.  When I got into the room, the 4 
computers were still running. Since the power outage was supposed to 
last more than 3 hours, which was well beyond their capability, I shut 
them all down. They were running just fine when I shut them down and 
the all booted normally.

I would tend to agree with the suggestion that your computer is failing. 
If fsck -y doesn't work, my HD has always developed bad sector(s) and 
the HD needs to be replaced. YMMV

Kent

-- 
Kent Stewart
Richland, WA

http://users.owt.com/kstewart/index.html