how does a system come up if you disable background fsck ?

[Micah]

Tamouh H. wrote:
>  
>> Ensel Sharon wrote:
>>> I have disabled background fsck in my /etc/rc.conf with:
>>>
>>> background_fsck="no"
>>>
>>> But I am curious - what does this mean for the system if the system 
>>> crashes ?
>>>
>>> Does this mean that the system will wait for all non root 
>> partitions 
>>> to fully fsck before coming up into multi-user mode ?
>>>
>>> OR
>>>
>>> Does it mean the system will boot up quickly into 
>> multi-user mode, but 
>>> the non-root partitions will just not be mounted and/or 
>> usable until I 
>>> fsck them by hand ?
>>>
>>> thanks.
>> The former, as I can say with ample experience this morning. 
>> (stupid USB
>> panic)
>>
>> HTH,
>> Micah
> 
> I find both ways useless. If fsck background starts after a crash it literally slows down the machine to a halt rendering it unusable.
> 
> If enable fsck to check the system prior to mounting device, it will take at least 15-30 minutes for it to complete (in the event of a hard crash). Which also translates to a downtime.
> 
> disabling fsck on the long run is a bad choice too as eventually the system files will become corrupt beyond repair.
> 
> What is the solution here ?
> 
> Thx,
> 
> Tamouh

If you can't acceptably absorb a 30 minute down time, then why are you 
running without backup power?

- Micah