Setting ext3 fstab options to fs_passno=0 (skip fsck) - Good or Bad?

[Alzhy]

A very energetic admin thinks our large linux systems with many Oracle ASMLib disks spend a lot of time in FSCK.. so /etc/fstab fs_passno was set to all 0.

I doubt though if this is a good idea. And if indeed the parallelized fsck is even the cause of the slow boot time. I really think it is with LVM pvscan and Oracle ASMlib scan.

What do you Gurii think?

[Randy Jones_3]

We disabled both the time-based and mount-count-based automatic fsck for our filesystems with large Oracle tablespaces to prevent the system from hanging in startup for 7-10 hours while fsck has a look around. It always seemed to pop up at the least opportune time.

We have scheduled down time on the production calendar, at which point (after backups, of course) we restart the server in single user mode and fire off a manual fsck for each file system. Once per year has been enough for us. Adjust how often you do this to suit your experience with fsck actually finding problems and/or your paranoia.

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

Gurii is plural for guru?

Bad idea.

There are legitimate reasons for fsck to be run and it should be allowed to run. The alternative is for your system to suddenly become unbootable without warning.

SEP