As a system administrator we should be very much cautions about data protection from unexpected events. These events include file system corruption as well. File system corruptions are caused due to many reasons, one reason is power interruptions. When you have critical systems, it is always advisable to check file system for errors and fix them regularly or at least at boot time. In this post we will see how to set those settings which will help us to fix file system errors at boot time without manual intervention. The settings for this file check is bit different in Redhat and Debian based machines though they use same fsck command to fix it.

Enable FSCK at boot time on Debian based machine

Give below entries in the file /etc/default/rcS and save the file.
 FSCKFIX=yes

Enable FSCK at boot time for Redhat based machines

To do this we have two options
1)Temporary do this for next boot
2)A permanent way to do fsck for every reboot

Temporary way: Just create a file in / as forcefsck.

touch /forcefsck

This is just an empty file which make system to trigger file system check at next boot. This file helps the system to check for errors for the next boot and it will be removed once the file system is checked for errors. If you want to make sure file system check done for every reboot then we have to follow a permanent solution as given below.

A permanent way: Edit file /etc/sysconfig/autofsck with following content

AUTOFSCK_DEF_CHECK=yes

Once this is done, just check if file system check is enabled in next boot or not using dumpe2fs or tune2fs commands as shown below.

tune2fs -l /dev/sda1
or
dumpe2fs -h /dev/sda1

Output:

root@linuxnix:/home/taggle# dumpe2fs -h /dev/sda1
 dumpe2fs 1.41.11 (14-Mar-2010)
 Filesystem volume name: boot
 Last mounted on: /
 Filesystem UUID: 3a7c5863-e00c-49e2-a838-1742de53ebce
 Filesystem magic number: 0xEF53
 Filesystem revision #: 1 (dynamic)
 Filesystem features: ext_attr resize_inode dir_index filetype extent flex_bg sparse_super large_file huge_file uninit_bg dir_nlink extra_isize
 Filesystem flags: signed_directory_hash
 Default mount options: journal_data_writeback
 Filesystem state: not clean
 Errors behavior: Continue
 Filesystem OS type: Linux
 Inode count: 122160
 Block count: 487936
 Reserved block count: 24396
 Free blocks: 206546
 Free inodes: 65869
 First block: 0
 Block size: 4096
 Fragment size: 4096
 Reserved GDT blocks: 119
 Blocks per group: 32768
 Fragments per group: 32768
 Inodes per group: 8144
 Inode blocks per group: 509
 Flex block group size: 16
 Filesystem created: Wed Dec 29 09:36:59 2010
 Last mount time: Fri Oct 16 16:37:51 2015
 Last write time: Tue Feb 11:30:47 2015
 Mount count: 3
 Maximum mount count: 23
 Last checked: Fri Oct 16 09:52:33 2015
 Check interval: 15552000 (6 months)
 Next check after: Tue Feb 23 11:52:33 2016
 Lifetime writes: 493 GB
 Reserved blocks uid: 0 (user root)
 Reserved blocks gid: 0 (group root)
 First inode: 11
 Inode size: 256
 Required extra isize: 28
 Desired extra isize: 28
 Default directory hash: half_md4
 Directory Hash Seed: ea221eae-0fc0-4154-b587-374e033882b1
 Journal backup: inode blocks0

From the above output we can see “Next check after” is set to Tue Feb 23 11:52:33 2016 Which indicates there is a check schedule for next boot.

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Surendra Anne

Mr Surendra Anne is from Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh, India. He is a Linux/Open source supporter who believes in Hard work, A down to earth person, Likes to share knowledge with others, Loves dogs, Likes photography. He works as Devops Engineer with Taggle systems, an IOT automatic water metering company, Sydney . You can contact him at surendra (@) linuxnix dot com.