Ubuntu
laptop-mode package

auto-fsck after 30 boots can be problematic on a laptop

Bug #11194 reported by Tom von Schwerdtner on 2004-12-14

Affects		Status	Importance	Assigned to	Milestone
	laptop-mode (Ubuntu)	Fix Released	Medium	Thom May

Bug Description

Twice now I've been hit with an fsck when I was booting on battery power to show
something to someone on my laptop. It really stinks to have to sit there for 5
minutes while the check runs... Potential "not that great" solutions include:

1) Prompt when the fsck is about to run and allow it to be skipped for this boot
2) Behave differently when running on battery power, eg don't run the fsck. You
could still potentially be booting the laptop for some clients and be plugged in
though, so its only a half solution.

Revision history for this message

Matt Zimmerman (mdz) wrote on 2004-12-25:

Thom and I discussed this at the recent conference, and I believe we decided
that #2 is the way to go.

Also, it would be nice if e2fsck would exit successfully (and simply skip
updating the mount count or last-checked data in the superblock) if the user
interrupted it. This would allow the scheduled checks to be gracefully skipped.

Revision history for this message

Thom May (thombot) wrote on 2005-01-07:

sysvinit (2.86-5ubuntu5) hoary; urgency=low

* Ensure we don't do filesystem checks if we're on Battery (Ubuntu #4680)

-- Thom May <email address hidden> Thu, 6 Jan 2005 20:12:22 +0000

Revision history for this message

Matt Zimmerman (mdz) wrote on 2005-01-07:

Reading this over again, I don't see how we ever agreed on this. :-)

Isn't it a bad idea to boot the system with a possibly corrupt filesystem?

Ideally we should disable _only_ the periodic check, and not the "your
filesystem is fucked" check

Revision history for this message

ismail dönmez (ismail-kde) wrote on 2005-01-07:

I think the fix is wrong I started to get this message on my PC:

"On battery, not fscking!"

I think thats because

if [ -x /usr/bin/on_ac_power ] && [ $rootcheck = yes ]; then
        if ! /usr/bin/on_ac_power >/dev/null 2>&1; then
             log_success_msg "On battery, not fscking!"
             rootcheck=no
        fi
fi

fails because /usr is not mounted at the time of check.