[TriLUG] scheduling a forced fsck

[Marty Ferguson]

Joseph Mack NA3T wrote:

>I have a laptop with a usb v1.0 port. I use an external 120G usb disk for
>backup and moving files between computers. After mounting 23 times (or
>whatever), the external disk has a forced fsck, which takes about 2hrs on
>the usb v1.0 machine, derailing any attempt to use the disk for the rest
>of the evening.
>
>I could set the disk to never require a forced fsck, but I'm afraid that
>might have other repercussions (although I'm not sure what).
>
>Running fsck on the disk before mounting it doesn't reset the counter for
>the number of mounts to be counted towards the forced fsck (although I
>would have hoped it did) and I still have to wait for a forced fsck when
>the disk wants, rather than when I want.
>
>I was hoping that I could do something on my schedule (eg run fsck on the
>disk when I know I'm not going to use it) to avoid this problem.
>
>Any suggestions?
>
>Thanks Joe
>
>  
>
Schedule it as a cron job; perhaps weekly or monthly

See man (5) crontab for the format of the file.

Also, if you are running anacron, then edit /etc/anacrontab so that
it doesn't try to do a missed fsck the next time you boot if the system
was shut down when the fsck was scheduled for cron.

Marty