fsck: broken file system with background check remains broken after bootup

[Freddie Cash]

On January 4, 2005 03:25 am, Rob wrote:
> Thanks for your replies, but apparently I didn't make my point
> clearly. Let me try again:
>
> If the system ends with a bad filesystem, the background check may
> leave the system unusable after bootup. For a FreeBSD guru this is
> indeed easy to fix (single user mode, rescue floppies, live CDs
> bootup etc.).
>
> However, the main user of this particular PC is not at all a guru; on
> 4.10 I had rc.conf configured such that at bootup all filesystems
> would be automatically fixed with: fsck_y_enable="YES".
> With 4.10, this always worked nicely, whatever sudden power cut have
> happened.
>
> However, with 5.3, a recent powercut crippled  the /usr filesystem
> such that X11 hanged. The user of this PC was convinced that FreeBSD
> was infected by a virus :(.
>
> An automatic fsck could have fixed the system (I eventually did it
> manually in single user mode), but the background check left the
> system broken.....
>
> So I want to configure 5.3 similar to former 4.10: a full automatic
> fix of all filesystems at bootup, in case the system was not properly
> shutdown. How can I do that?

As with FreeBSD 4.x, all rc.conf options are listed 
in /etc/defaults/rc.conf.  Read /etc/defaults/rc.conf and put the 
appropriate fsck options into /etc/rc.conf.

What you want to do is disable background fsck, giving you the same 
behaviour as with 4.x,
-- 
Freddie Cash, CCNT CCLP        Helpdesk / Network Support Tech.
School District 73             (250) 377-HELP [377-4357]
fcash-ml at sd73.bc.ca