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How can I make fsck run non-interactively at boot time?

rated 0 times [ 31] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 41845 / 2 Years ago, tue, september 13, 2022, 12:15:03

I have a headless Ubuntu 12.04 server in a datacenter 1500 miles away. Twice now on reboot the system decided it had to fsck. Unfortunately Ubuntu ran fsck in interactive mode, so I had to ask someone at my datacenter to go over, plug in a console, and press the Y key. How do I set it up so that fsck runs in non-interactive mode at boot time with the -y or -p (aka -a) flag?

If I understand Ubuntu's boot process correctly, init invokes mountall which in turn invokes fsck. However I don't see any way to configure how fsck is invoked. Is this possible?

(To head off one suggestion; I'm aware I can use tune2fs -i 0 -c 0 to prevent periodic fscks. That may help a little but I need the system to try to come back up even if it had a real reason to fsck, say after a power failure.)

In response to followup questions, here's the pertinent details of my /etc/fstab. I don't believe I've edited this at all from what Ubuntu put there.

UUID=3515461e-d425-4525-a07d-da986d2d7e04 /               ext4    errors=remount-ro 0       1

UUID=90908358-b147-42e2-8235-38c8119f15a6 /boot           ext4    defaults        0       2

UUID=01f67147-9117-4229-9b98-e97fa526bfc0 none            swap    sw              0       0

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2 Years ago

answered 2 Years ago antebrow · Accepted Answer

The setting I am looking for is in /etc/default/rcS, FSCKFIX=yes. This means "automatically repair filesystems with inconsistencies during boot" and causes fsck to run with the -y flag. It was set to no in both of my Ubuntu systems.

Even when set to no, the boot time fsck is still somewhat noninteractive. mountall runs fsck with -a, a synonym for -p, which means "automatically fix any filesystem problems that can be safely fixed without human intervention". Apparently -p drops to interactive mode if there are unsafe fixes to be made. To run fully automatically, you need -y or FSCKFIX=yes.

Here's the relevant bit of code from mountall.c

if (fsck_fix || mnt->fsck_fix) {

  NIH_MUST (nih_str_array_add (&args, NULL, &args_len, "-y"));

} else {

  NIH_MUST (nih_str_array_add (&args, NULL, &args_len, "-a"));

}