fsck way too slow

[Daniel Bye]

On Fri, May 12, 2006 at 10:58:23AM -0400, Bill Moran wrote:
> Andrea Venturoli <ml.diespammer at netfence.it> wrote:
> 
> > Hello.
> > I've got a i386/6.1 box with only one big root partition.
> > The problem is that, whenever the machine is not properly shutdown, fsck 
> > on boot takes eons.
> > 
> > First of all: I believe that fsck should run in background, but it 
> > doesn't. How can I tell why?
> 
> >From my desktop:
> mount
> /dev/ad0s1a on / (ufs, local)
> devfs on /dev (devfs, local)
> /dev/ad0s1d on /tmp (ufs, local, soft-updates)
> /dev/ad0s1f on /usr (ufs, local, soft-updates)
> /dev/ad0s1e on /var (ufs, local, soft-updates)
> 
> Note that / does not have soft-updates, which I believe is the default.
> AFAIR, fsck can not do background mode unless soft-updates is enabled.
> 
> That's likely your problem.

fsck(8) suggests that any file system required during the boot
process is not a valid candidate for background checking.  Naturally,
there is no file system more important to the boot process than / so it
cannot be checked in the background.  I'm not sure if softupdates has
any bearing on background fscking, but IANAE, and all that.

So, as jerry said, it's a Bad Idea to have just one partition, for many
reasons, this being among them.

Dan

-- 
Daniel Bye

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