On Sat, May 08, 2004 at 06:44:20PM -0500, Randy Kelsoe wrote: > John Thompson wrote: > > >What do you think checks for the "dirty" bit? That's right; "fsck." If > >it find the dirty bit set, it calls the filesystem-appropriate utility > >(eg "fsck.ext3" or whatever) to check and fix any problems. When fsck > >finds the dirty bit set on an xfs filesystem, it calls "fsck.xfs" which > >simply returns a "successful" signal back to fsck, which then moves on > >to the next filesystem. > > > Can you prove that the system uses fsck to check the filesystem's dirty > flag? I can't. I see where it gets called if the filesystem is dirty, > but not before that. The last field in /etc/fstab says if a filesystem is to be checked and in what order. When booting, /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit calls fsck -A, that parses the /etc/fstab field and calls for each filesystem to be checked /sbin/fsck.filesystem_type. That fsck.filesystem_type is the one that checks the dirty bit on the filesystem (for fsck.* that do something usefull, like fsck.ext2/3, vfat and minix). For fsck.ext3, a check is made for a journal to replay, and if the replay is successful the filesystem is considered clean. A reason you don't see where fsck gets called if the system isn't dirty, could be that you're not noticing the message saying it's clean. :) Regards, Luciano Rocha -- Consciousness: that annoying time between naps.
