Re: [patch] ext2/3: document conditions when reliable operation ispossible

[Eric Sandeen]

Theodore Tso wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 06:43:24AM -0700, david@xxxxxxx wrote:
> > > > as the ext3 authors have stated many times over the years, you still need
> > > > to run fsck periodicly anyway.
> > > Where is that documented?
> > linux-kernel mailing list archives.
>
> Probably from some 6-8 years ago, in e-mail postings that I made.  My
> argument has always been that PC-class hardware is crap, and it's a
> Really Good Idea to periodically check the metadata because corruption
> there can end up causing massive data loss.  The main problem is that
> doing it at reboot time really hurt system availability, and "after 20
> reboots (plus or minus)" resulted in fsck checks at wildly varying
> intervals depending on how often people reboot.

Aside ... can we default mkfs.ext3 to not set a mandatory fsck interval 
then? :)

-Eric

> What I've been recommending for some time is that people use LVM, and
> run fsck on a snapshot every week or two, at some convenient time when
> the system load is at a minimum.  There is an e2croncheck script in
> the e2fsprogs sources, in the contrib directory; it's short enough
> that I'll attach here here.
>
> Is it *necessary*?  In a world where hardware is perfect, no.  In a
> world where people don't bother buying ECC memory because it's 10%
> more expensive, and PC builders use the cheapest possible parts --- I
> think it's a really good idea.
>
> 						- Ted
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