background fsck

David Kirchner dpk at dpk.net
Mon Nov 21 01:32:05 GMT 2005


On 11/20/05, Wojciech Puchar <wojtek at tensor.3miasto.net> wrote:
> what is the rule to decide if filesystem may be background checked or not?
>
> for example my / is checked foreground, while /home checked background.
>
> can't root partition be background checked too?

The root partition is probably checked in the foreground for safety
reasons, since the root partition is so critical to everything on the
server. Personally I don't use or trust background fscks -- when a
server comes back up after a crash, I'd rather it just finish the fsck
before coming up live, since the fsck does slow the server down
noticably (and if it was an already busy web server, this can be a
problem).

There's also the matter of serious problems with background fscks,
with open PRs:

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=kern/53137
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=kern/86423

and the less serious (since it is about UFS1):

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=kern/84589


More information about the freebsd-questions mailing list