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Idea #2426: Provide an inteface for filesystem check failures

Written by andrearatto the 2 Mar 08 at 09:54. Category: System. Related project: Nothing/Others. Status: New
Rationale
Sometime the filesystem check on boot may fail and some errors have to be fixed by a manual run of fsck.
For the unexperienced user dropping to a root shell is a bad idea. A little (ncurses based maybe) interface to help this situations would be much more "human".
Eventually the same could be applied to mount errors.
Tags: fsck usability

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Solution #1: Auto-generated solution of idea #2426
Written by andrearatto the 2 Mar 08 at 09:54.
Ubuntu Brainstorm was updated in January 2009. Since the idea #2426 was submitted before this update, its rationale and solution are not separated. Please vote accordingly, and if you have the necessary rights, please separate the rationale from the solution. Thanks!

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bertm wrote on the 2 Mar 08 at 11:39
Great idea! No more fuzzy command line error fixing required.

steve196 wrote on the 21 Mar 08 at 22:17
Thereis nothing bad about the command line as long as one is told, what one can do. A few lines of help text for the specific situation would do it.

nedu wrote on the 16 Apr 08 at 16:05
The last time I had a failed fsck, the root cause was a dead power-supply fan.

In fact, at least half the times when I've ever had severe problems on boot, the root cause was hardware-related.

I don't know what an inexperienced user would or could do when confronted with symptoms indicating a possible hardware failure. (Probably end up buying a new box?) But the absolute last thing I want is some moronic software trying to programatically "fix" the problem.

The boot process policy should be...
"When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout."

Don't mess with dropping to a root shell.

Magnes wrote on the 27 Apr 08 at 06:14
It is VERY confusing for (even experienced) user, when the boot is stopped and you end up in root shell. Also - it's all in english - if someone doesn't know the language he wouldn't be thrilled :(.
I had this situation when upgrading to 8.04 and after running fsck I typed "shutdown -r now" but the 8.04 started with all drives unmounted. It was very, very bad. I suppose inexperienced user would just reset the computer and hope for the best.

balliano wrote on the 9 Jul 08 at 12:54
most of the times i get this problem is when for some reason the filesystems aren't clean because of a power loss, all i do is fsck autorepair on all disks and reboot: all working back again

i think this should be done graphically and automatically, not for me (i can deal with the cli) but for all newbies (also win98 had an automatic checkdisk ;-))

saepia wrote on the 12 Aug 08 at 10:51
I post here, what I previously posted as an ubuntu bug:

"There're several use cases where user is forced to open a terminal. All are related to broken filesystems.

Case 1: NTFS without clean OS shutdown - when your PC shuts down rapidly (or windows from 2nd partition hangs) NTFS is not left in clean state. Then, partitions aren't automatically mounted - so they don't appear on the desktop and nautilus shows partitions in its sidebar but refuses to mount them. Solution in most cases is to use -o force option to mount filesystem. Annoying when you have also windows at laptop.

Case 2: (V)FAT with broken FAT table that causes to mount readonly. FS is mounted, but error apears during copying etc. AFAIK remounting r-o can happen late, in the case of operation, not during mounting. Annoying when you have pendrive or mp3 player with generic storage function.

In both cases, and propably a lot of next ones that I hadn't encountered there's a need for user-friendly interface that should warn about situation, and solve the problem."

ekorn wrote on the 11 Dec 08 at 11:03
Im pretty sick of telling my father via Phone what he should type in the root shell. Especial because he is not able to read proper English, so at least some translation is absolutely needed.

Endolith wrote on the 8 Apr 09 at 15:32
ncurses based?? That's still the command line in the eyes of most people.

spade wrote on the 13 Sep 11 at 10:52
Probably the partitions maintenance should be modified to improve the way it is done, with a GUI based on tune2fs that allows :
- to schedule of all or each partition fsck
- to have the possibility to check at the startup or the shutting down (as autofsck allowed it)
- to allow to automatically fix errors
- to background the check if the partition is not the root nor the home. Then the check could finish after the login and the mount could be postponed afterward (if present in fstab)
- to display the partition id, progression and the shortcut to bypass each check (not necessarily all of them) even if the boot is quiet. The verbose option is useful for an exceptional use and not a daily one.

spade wrote on the 13 Sep 11 at 10:57
I add this :
- to allow a parameter like : "maximum number of checks per startup"

spade wrote on the 13 Sep 11 at 11:01
And this :
- to allow FAT and NTFS automatic checks


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