[Pkg-sysvinit-devel] Bug#486258: sysvinit: Make scheduled fscks more user-friendly

[David]

Package: sysvinit
Version: 2.86.ds1-57
Severity: wishlist

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Don't force users to wait for / to finish running a scheduled fsck
(every X days or Y boots) before they can start using the system.

If I hit Ctrl+C during a / scan, the / partition is left read-only, and
the system has problems booting up and takes a long time.

I've discussed this a bit on the Debian Users mailing list. Here is the
thread:

http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2008/06/msg00833.html

I'm going to file some related feature requests against the
e2fsprogs package (will follow up this feature request with
the bug number).

Here are some sysvinit-specific features requests. Let me know if I
should file these as feature requests against other packages instead:

1) Allow users to temporarily bypass fsck

Give users a warning before starting a scheduled fsck. Let them press a
key to bypass it this time (it will run at the next boot).

2) Let users cleanly interrupt bootup fsck

Users should be allowed to interrupt a scheduled / fsck, without leaving
the / partition readonly.

3) Let the user run fscks (scheduled or user-forced) at other times
besides boot.

eg:

3.1) During shutdown, after the disks are unmounted, but before the
system is halted.

3.2) During bootup (same time as "shutdown -rF", but the system will
power off immediately after that)

3.3) During shutdown/reboot (and then a power off, as above), but only
if the partitions had a scheduled fsck.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: lenny/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.25-2-686 (SMP w/1 CPU core)
Locale: LANG=en_ZA.utf8, LC_CTYPE=en_ZA.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages sysvinit depends on:
ii  initscripts                  2.86.ds1-57 Scripts for initializing and shutt
ii  libc6                        2.7-11      GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  libselinux1                  2.0.59-1    SELinux shared libraries
ii  libsepol1                    2.0.25-1    Security Enhanced Linux policy lib
ii  sysv-rc                      2.86.ds1-57 System-V-like runlevel change mech
ii  sysvinit-utils               2.86.ds1-57 System-V-like utilities

sysvinit recommends no packages.

-- no debconf information