fsck!

[Brett Glass]

Often, after a FreeBSD 4.x system has been powered down without a proper 
shutdown, the system complains of inconsistencies on the disk. Yet, if 
one runs the command "fsck -f" after it's rebooted, the fsck program 
doesn't fix the problems it finds; instead, it says "NO WRITE" at the 
beginning of each report. (It seems not to want to touch things unless 
they're unmounted.) So, the system has to come down AGAIN.

What's the best and fastest way of ensuring disk consistency on a system 
that you're powering up after an abrupt outage? What about a system that 
powered up again before you arrived to nurse it through a reboot?

--Brett Glass