fsck recoveries, configuration

[Gary Aitken]

On 08/17/12 19:05, Polytropon wrote:
>> 2.  When my machine hung (could not rlogin or ping), I powered
>> off and rebooted.
> 
> Does the machine have a "soft power button" and it is configured
> to issue a "shutdown -p now" (which is quite common)? When you
> have access to the machine, try that. Even if the machine does
> not accept network logins, this mechanism might still work.

Hmmm.  It has a "soft" power button; have to hold it down 5 sec or so to power off.  Those things can be configured to issue a command that will actually get executed without a login?  I assume you're talking about a bios option?  How does that work?  sounds like magic of some sort...  Or is this a whole login sequence with the shutdown at the end?

>> Reboot did a deferred fsck.
> 
> Is this intended? Personally, I'd rather wait some time to boot
> in a fully checked file system environment then dealing with the
> uncertain situation of snapshots and background FS check activity.
> In worst case, I want to be prompted by fsck if a major defect has
> been found that requires administrator attention.
> 
> Put
> 
> 	background_fsck="NO"
> 
> into /etc/rc.conf to get this behaviour.

Yeah, I came to that conclusion...  Thanks.

>> After it booted I logged in, and also logged in on another system.
>> On the remote system I could do a ping but rlogin returned
>> "connection reset by peer", even though I could log in locally.
> 
> Does rlogin work when you "give the system some time to recover"?

yes, if it's not hung -- i.e. done with fsck, I think.  I verified that by monitoring the delayed fsck process and as soon as it was done the rlogin worked.

>> I then attempted to switch consoles using
>>    <alt>fn
>> but could not.
> 
> That would imply you're still stuck in SUM. A strange constellation
> given that it appears that you have fsck running in background.
> 

It seems to me this is always the case -- delayed fsck waits 60 seconds by default to start.  During that time the system has come up multi-user, so it's trivial to be logged in under multi-user mode with fsck running.