Check disk on EVERY boot

[retrodans]

Not sure when this really started sadly, but every time I boot into my Ubuntu laptop is runs a check disc. if I cancel it, it reboots and asks again, so I have to wait 30mins every boot for it to complete scanning.

Is this a common issue? I would appreciate any suggestion people may be able to give.

Thanks,
Dan

[mcduck]

no, it's not a common issue, and even when the check is done, it shouldn't take anywhere near that long.

Is it actually reporting any errors? Have you checked the SMART status of the disk it's checking, perhaps there is some problem with he physical disk itself?

Also what kind of drive is it, do you have other disks, have you recently added/removed any new drives or partitions, are you dual booting with Windows or some other OS? The more information you can give people, the better chance they'll have figuring out what might be the problem...

[retrodans]

Thanks every so much for the reply, I will try and add some new details here. Although what do you mean by SMART status of the disk? I tried the below, it kinda looks okay, but I have not used this before as you might guess.

$ sudo smartctl -i /dev/sda
smartctl 5.41 2011-06-09 r3365 [i686-linux-3.2.0-34-generic-pae] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-11 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family:     Western Digital Scorpio Blue Serial ATA
Device Model:     WDC WD3200BEVT-22ZCT0
Serial Number:    WD-WXE608F32756
LU WWN Device Id: 5 0014ee 2572f62e9
Firmware Version: 11.01A11
User Capacity:    320,072,933,376 bytes [320 GB]
Sector Size:      512 bytes logical/physical
Device is:        In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is:   8
ATA Standard is:  Exact ATA specification draft version not indicated
Local Time is:    Tue Dec 11 22:21:48 2012 GMT
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled 

This is an acer aspire laptop, and I have not physically played with the drive. I am mounting many other drives on boot though which are coming from a western digital NAS drive.

Thanks again for your time,
Dan

[mcduck]

I'm more interested about the drive health information than the generic info, try this:

sudo smartctl -H /dev/sda

You can also run a short (or long) self-test:

sudo smartctl --test=short /dev/sda
sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda

(or use the Disk Management, which would give you nice graphical tools for checking the drive health)

How are you mounting the NAS drive, is it permanently mounted using fstab (if yes, attaching your fstab here could be useful), or is the mounting done in some other way? And I assume the fsck in startup is about the sda drive?

[TheFu]

The type of file systems involved need to be understood. If a journal-ed file system takes 30 minutes to check, then you definitely have a big issue that needs to be resolved unless the FS is 20+TB.

For directly attached storage, the settings that control how often a file system is check for safety reasons is controlled with tune2fs (or whatever the equivalent is for the file system involved).

How is the NAS storage mounted? iSCSI, AoE or something else?

[retrodans]

FSTAB
-----
As you can see, I have commented out now the mounting of the NAS drives for now, this has not solved the problem though. I do still have the drive bookmarked using the GUI, but I doubt this would cause any issues.

proc            /proc           proc    nodev,noexec,nosuid 0       0
UUID=d4632dd4-13ce-4b61-85ad-80f1250740c8 /               ext2    errors=remount-ro,user_xattr 0       1
UUID=8b5468a1-0b90-414b-8245-c58a6e1454e5 none            swap    sw              0       0
UUID=7C7C6ED37C6E87AA /media/sda1 ntfs-3g users 0 0
UUID=4E907A68907A5685 /media/sda2 ntfs-3g users 0 0
#//192.168.0.101/media    /media/media        cifs    credentials=/root/.smbcredentials,iocharset=utf8,file_mode=0777,dir_mode=0777 0 0
#//192.168.0.101/photos    /media/photos        cifs    credentials=/root/.smbcredentials,iocharset=utf8,file_mode=0777,dir_mode=0777 0 0
#//192.168.0.101/dan    /media/dan        cifs    credentials=/root/.smbcredentials,iocharset=utf8,file_mode=0777,dir_mode=0777 0 0
#//192.168.0.101/shiv    /media/shiv        cifs    credentials=/root/.smbcredentials,iocharset=utf8,file_mode=0777,dir_mode=0777 0 0
#//192.168.0.101/software    /media/software        cifs    credentials=/root/.smbcredentials,iocharset=utf8,file_mode=0777,dir_mode=0777 0 0
#//192.168.0.101/public    /media/public        cifs    credentials=/root/.smbcredentials,iocharset=utf8,file_mode=0777,dir_mode=0777 0 0 

Tidy Up and test
----------------
I updated some applications, and tidied up desktop/home in general to reduce filesize. Then I rebooted with a clock sitting next to me. The complete startup process took 15-16mins to complete (including the disk check).
I have also noted that whilst it asks for a scan every boot, I can cancel it now (cancelling makes me wait 1-5mins thought still).



Local disk size = 320GB
-----------------------



sudo smartctl -H /dev/sda
-------------------------
smartctl 5.41 2011-06-09 r3365 [i686-linux-3.2.0-34-generic-pae] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-11 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED



fsck in startup is about the sda drive?
---------------------------------------
I will check this now and update after a reboot

[retrodans]

fsck in startup is about the sda drive?
---------------------------------------
How do I check this? I thought it would tell me on reboot, but it just says 'checking disk drives'.



Also
----
Not sure if it is worth noting, but my laptop first had Ubuntu 10 installed, and I have done regular upgrades to it, but have not completely wiped the drive and installed afresh since. Current version is Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS.

I am also dual booting, with Ubuntu being primarily used, but windows there incase I need it for work.


Thanks,
Dan

[Sazhen86]

Can you post the output from "tune2fs -l <device>" ? Where <device> is the device containing the filesystem that is being checked.

[retrodans]

@Sazhen86 sorry if I am being daft, but I am not sure which drive to check. I ran the below command, and got the following results

$ sudo tune2fs -l /dev/sda
tune2fs 1.42 (29-Nov-2011)
tune2fs: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/sda
Couldn't find valid filesystem superblock.

[Sazhen86]

/dev/sda is the whole drive, what you need to specify is the partition with the file system on it. What does the "mount" command say?

Also, can you check /var/log/boot.log to see if there are any log entries that may give us a clue as to what is going on?

Another thought. There isn't a file called forcefsck in the / directory is there?