Comment 22 for bug 513644

After discussing the issue with Adam Blomberg (paradox606), he suggested enabling the verbose option to get more information regarding the scan.

He indicated that this can be done by modifying /etc/default/rcS to include "VERBOSE=yes", and that it is also possible to force the repair of errors with the "FSCKFIX=yes" option. This will result in additional detail in the logs SideShowFry (fry-n) was looking at.

Adam's suggested method:

12.04 Force FIlesystem Check:
-----------------------------------------
# tell system to force filesystem checks on startup for all filesystems in /etc/fstab with indications to do filesystem checks.
touch /forcefsck

# Tell system to be more verbose at startup
sudo sed -i "s/VERBOSE=no/VERBOSE=yes/" /etc/default/rcS

# Then, after reboot, examine /var/log/boot.log, the results of the filesystem check will be visible there.

# If you also want the filesystem check to perform all repairs, make this change:
sudo sed -i "s/FSCKFIX=no/FSCKFIX=yes/" /etc/default/rcS

14.04 Force FIlesystem Check:
-----------------------------------------
# tell system to force filesystem checks on startup for all filesystems in /etc/fstab with indications to do filesystem checks.
touch /forcefsck

# Tell system to be more verbose at startup
sudo sed -i "s/#VERBOSE=no/VERBOSE=yes/" /etc/default/rcS

# Then, after reboot, examine /var/log/upstart/mountall.log, the results of the filesystem check will be visible there.

# If you also want the filesystem check to perform all repairs, make this change:
sudo sed -i "s/#FSCKFIX=no/FSCKFIX=yes/" /etc/default/rcS

Performing this myself I find the following on a 14.04 system:

# cat /var/log/upstart/mountall.log
fsck from util-linux 2.20.1
/dev/vda1: clean, 248966/3670016 files, 2280909/14679040 blocks
fsck from util-linux 2.20.1
e2fsck 1.42.9 (4-Feb-2014)
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Pass 2: Checking directory structure
Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity
Pass 4: Checking reference counts
Pass 5: Checking group summary information
/dev/vda1: 248988/3670016 files (0.2% non-contiguous), 2281324/14679040 blocks

Be sure to note the number sign that has been added in the 14.04 config file - the two sed commands are not interchangeable.

Also as per Adam, on 16.04 the /forcefsck functionality is not available, so the recommended method of triggering a filesystem check on boot is to use tune2fs, as this method will work on 12.04, 14.04 and 16.04:

sudo tune2fs -CCOUNT DEVICE

Setting the count to 1 will cause an fsck on each reboot, while -1 disables the scan.