Q: How to force a check of the file systems? A: If the file "/forcefsck" exists a file system consistency check (fsck) will be forced at the next boot up. The command line commands look like: touch /forcefsck reboot This is a better solution than pushing the reset button. It is true that pushing the reset button will leave the file "/.autofsck" so file system checks will take place. However other file systems are at risk of damage. Also processes are killed with no warning and could leave their good data in bad states on healthy file systems. This trick has value because it is hard to run fsck on the root file system. Boot time provides a special case where / can be checked. Scan the startup script that does this magic: more /etc/rc.sysinit === I post this in part because a bunch of us were trying to help a person with a bad directory/file that they could not remove. It turned out that there was file system corruption. This trick might have cleaned up the trouble and is a reasonable thing to do. -- T o m M i t c h e l l mitch48-at-sbcglobal-dot-net
