[kwlug-disc] Diagnosing suspected HD problem

[John Van Ostrand]

----- Original Message -----
> Thanks Khalid. I have three scsi drives, one contains everything
> except /home. the other two drives are linux raid and are mounted at
> /home.

One thing to mention is that file systems can become corrupt without the system knowing about it. Whether it's bugs in the file system code, bugs in firmware or cosmic rays file systems can become corrupt even though a cursory fsck quickly comes back with an okay. This means that the fsck done during reboot is not actually fully checking the entire file system, it's only checking for a clean unmount and journals.

Forcing an fsck occasionally is a good idea on systems that can operationally support it. Manually doing a forced fsck is a good idea when a file system is acting up.

On red hat system, you can create a /forcefsck file (touch /forcefsck) to force a full check of all filesystems. Be sure you have console access so you can respond to fix questions, or create a file called /fsckoptions and put one line, -y, to have fsck auto-fix. I still wouldn't do this without console access.

-- 
John Van Ostrand 
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Net Direct Inc. 
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