RFE: autofsck

[Paul Wouters]

On Tue, 10 Jun 2008, Alan Cox wrote:

> Date: Tue, 10 Jun 2008 13:36:02 -0400
> From: Alan Cox <alan at redhat.com>
> To: Development discussions related to Fedora <fedora-devel-list at redhat.com>
> Subject: Re: RFE: autofsck
> 
> On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 12:30:53PM -0400, Paul Wouters wrote:
>> Who, aside from Ted Tso, can do anything else but re-run with "yes"? You
>> are just postponing the problem, and thereby adding to the problem.
>
> Most users.

Right. Most users can't even use a command line, let alone a raw disk editor.

>> Though personally, I'd prefer an Anaconda option for it.
>>
>> 	"Unselect this option if you want to disable automatic repair
>> 	 attempts of the filesystem, and have a chance to use a
>> 	 raw filesystem editor to directly edit raw blocks on disk"
>
> That would suck. For most users you might as well ask them if they wanted
> frobnicate the meta-haddock.

Indeed. We agree there. Hence "unselect". Let's assume that users who don't
know what frobinating a meta-haddock is, will stick to defaults :)

> There are lots of cases you want that thing to stop. For example if there is
> important data on the box and you decide to get advice first. If you follow
> the most basic single rule of recovering a damaged file system you want it
> to stop so you can make a copy. Indeed you may well need a professional recovery
> expert or have a support contract and need to ask the helpdesk...

How many people on this list have:

a) paid for root filesystem data recovery
b) answered "no" and hand edited the root fs?

> -y in some cases is also things like:
> 	"Destroy any hope of recovering your PhD Thesis"

Don't story your PhD on your root fs. Also, if you want to protect against PhD
thesis for normal users, you should make root's "rm" alias a global setting.

Just to remind you, what people have a problem with is not running manual
fsck's on certain filesystems. People have a problem with machines being stuck
in single user mode waiting for manual intervention leading "fsck -y" anyway
on the root filesystem.

If my remote machine comes back, starts sshd, and then has /home not mounted
because of an INCOSISTENCT FILESYSTEM error, I'm more then happy to run fsck -y
manually.

Paul