Question

I have an ubuntu server (11.10) on a single-board computer that occasionally is subject to being powered down unexpectedly. When it is booted afterward, fsck prompts the user to hit ‘f’ to check the drive. Because this server does not normally have a monitor and keyboard connected, and the only way to normally access it is through SSH, this is very inconvenient.

Is there a way of guaranteeing that on boot any required fsck check can be done without user input? Basically, I want it to always run ‘fsck -y’ on boot (when problems are detected), rather than prompting the user for input.

Thanks!

Answer 1

So I found two related solutions to my problem:

I’m not sure these are valid everywhere, but they work on ubuntu server 11.10.

/etc/default/rcS looks like this:

#
# /etc/default/rcS
#
# Default settings for the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/
#
# For information about these variables see the rcS(5) manual page.
#
# This file belongs to the "initscripts" package.

# delete files in /tmp during boot older than x days.
# '0' means always, -1 or 'infinite' disables the feature
TMPTIME=0

# spawn sulogin during boot, continue normal boot if not used in 30 seconds
SULOGIN=no

# do not allow users to log in until the boot has completed
DELAYLOGIN=no

# assume that the BIOS clock is set to UTC time (recommended)
UTC=yes

# be more verbose during the boot process
VERBOSE=no

# automatically repair filesystems with inconsistencies during boot
FSCKFIX=no

Make sure that that final line instead reads

# automatically repair filesystems with inconsistencies during boot
FSCKFIX=yes

Another barrier I had to the system just booting always without requiring user intervention was the grub bootloader screen waiting for user input after a failed / interrupted boot.

This requires editing the grub setup file in
/etc/grub.d/00_header

/etc/grub.d$ grep -r -n -C3 timeout ./
./00_header-229-    fi
./00_header-230-fi
./00_header-231-
./00_header:232:make_timeout ()
./00_header-233-{
./00_header-234-    cat << EOF
./00_header-235-if [ "\${recordfail}" = 1 ]; then
./00_header:236:  set timeout=-1
./00_header-237-else
./00_header:238:  set timeout=${2}
./00_header-239-fi
./00_header-240-EOF
./00_header-241-}

simply change line 236 to

set timeout = 0

and line 238 to

set timeout = 0

This causes the system to never pause while booting. After editing the file, run
sudo update-grub
to get the changes implemented in the /boot/grub/grub.cfg file.