svn commit: r328013 - head/sbin/fsck_ffs

[Ian Lepore]

On Sat, 2018-03-10 at 09:02 -0800, Rodney W. Grimes wrote:
> > 
> > On Sat, 2018-03-10 at 08:44 -0800, Rodney W. Grimes wrote:
> > > 
[...]
> > > > add "-T ffs:-R" to the initial fsck invocation in rc.d/fsck.
> > > Please do not do that, if fsck -p fails YOU may optionally
> > > wish to continue, or do retries, but please do not make this
> > > a hardcoded situation.??At most make it a controllable knob
> > > that defaults to the old behavior please.
> > > 
> > > Thanks you,
> > This whole situation with fsck retries is just very strange. ?How
> > many other tools in the base system exhibit this behavior:?
> > 
> >     I didn't do everything you asked, even though I am completely
> >     capable of doing so. ?If you'd like to actually do the thing 
> >     you asked for, please run this program again.
> > 
> > If there is some reason why fsck should do less than a complete job
> > under some circumstances, isn't THAT the exceptional situation that
> > should need a special flag to make it happen?
> The job is "make sure my data is ok, keep my data at all costs, do
> not however do something that may damange my data".
> 
> The job is NOT "do everything you can to bring the file system to
> a consistent state, even if you have to screw my data all up".
> 

I'm not sure why you think the -R flag is some sort of "ruin my data"
request.  Maybe because all of this stuff is so scantily documented in
the manpage?

    -R Instruct fsck_ffs to restart itself if it encounters certain  
     errors that warrant another run.

Who knows what "certain errors" means?  

Looking at the code, it appears -R has no effect if you're in preen
mode.  Hmmm, what's "preen mode" again?  Don't bother looking in the
man page, you'll just find a bunch of mentions of the word preen that
say "see the -p flag" and then, surrealistically, when you look at the
-p flag it says "Preen file systems (see above)".  Of course, what was
above was all the places that told you to see -p.

So, I guess I'll just keep using fsck_y_enable=YES and relying on the
fact that by default that now includes the -R option.

-- Ian