Messages at start-up

[payasam]

Mandrake 10.0 and Win 98 SE. LILO.

 

When I booted into Mandrake just now, I got a message to the effect that the system had been started 29 times without being checked. I was instructed to run fsck manually, but immediately after that there was an offer to check everything. There was also a warning that data might be lost. I told the system to go ahead. After the announcement "/dev/hda7 - forced check" there was a series of messages of the form "Inode x, i_size is y, should be 0" (x and y being numerical values). Then the box rebooted.

 

Everything seems to be OK, but I'm unhappy because I don't understand what the fuss was about. I trust that someone will explain the thing to me.

[Steve Scrimpshire]

Can you post your /etc/fstab contents here?

[tyme]

Often there's a setting to check the drives after so many reboots. Those messages you saw was just fsck fixing nodes that had wrong values. As long as everythings fine, you have nothing to worry about :). It's possible you had a bad shut down at some point, hence the errors.

[payasam]

Will do that, Steve, though not immediately. It's a working weekend.

 

That's a relief, Tyme. The "data may be lost" warning worried me a little. I really should have said in my original post that power outages are not infrequent here and I don't have a UPS. May I ask what it is that you're angry about? Unless, of course, anger is a way of life.

[arctic]

hmm..i only encountered it in ext2 and ext3 modes. is your filesystem ext2 or ext3? if yes, next time you install mandrake, use the reiserfs-fileformat for your partitions. you won't be bothered by this "systemcheck" in reiserfs. at least it never happened to me (even after 100+ reboots).

[payasam]

Here we are, Steve:

 

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.

#

# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>

/dev/hda7 / ext2 errors=remount-ro 0 1

none /dev/pts devpts mode=0620 0 0

/dev/hdb /mnt/cdrom auto umask=0,user,iocharset=iso8859-15,codepage=850,noauto,ro,exec 0 0

none /mnt/floppy supermount dev=/dev/fd0,fs=ext2:vfat,--,umask=0,iocharset=iso8859-15,sync,codepage=850 0 0

none /mnt/floppy2 supermount dev=/dev/fd1,fs=ext2:vfat,--,umask=0,iocharset=iso8859-15,sync,codepage=850 0 0

/dev/hda1 /mnt/win_c vfat umask=0,iocharset=iso8859-15,codepage=850 0 0

/dev/hda5 /mnt/win_d vfat umask=0,iocharset=iso8859-15,codepage=850 0 0

none /proc proc defaults 0 0

none /tmp tmpfs defaults 0 0

/dev/hda6 swap swap sw 0 0

 

------------------

I wonder, Arctic, if the system check is such a bad thing after all. What if there is an error and the check catches it before it can do anything really damaging? I'd rather be safe than get bugged by a wait of a couple of minutes.

[arctic]

I wonder, Arctic, if the system check is such a bad thing after all. What if there is an error and the check catches it before it can do anything really damaging? I'd rather be safe than get bugged by a wait of a couple of minutes.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

a system check is never a bad thing, but reiserfs handles the whole story in a better way than ext2 or ext3, as far as i know (i haven't read anything contrary to date) and only starts a system-check if something really went wrong. and its ability to restore the filesystem seems to be slightly better than the extended-format ones.

[fissy]

just as well, given it seems incredibly more likely to crash and burn horribly.

[payasam]

You haven't read anything to the contrary to date, Arctic? Well, I am far ahead of you - I haven't read ANYTHING. That's what comes of not showing reverence for ancestral potatoes.