Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!maytag!watvlsi!peregier
From: peregier@watvlsi.waterloo.edu (Phil Regier)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mips
Subject: root file system not checked on reboot
Message-ID: <4529@watvlsi.waterloo.edu>
Date: 31 Jul 89 19:37:09 GMT
Distribution: comp
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 56

On our MIPS M-2000 running RISC/os 4.00, the root file system is not
being checked when the system reboots.  MIPS has been notified and is
looking at it, but I thought others may want to check if the same
thing is happening to them.  The message on the console says that the
root file system is being checked, but it really isn't (we use the
fast file system).  We get the following on the console:

Checking root file system () automatically.
The system is coming up.  Please wait.

If one looks in the /etc/bcheckrc file where this checking is supposed to
start, one finds that for each return code of fsck, there should be
a message echoed after the "Checking root ..." message which never gets
printed (as can be seen from the relevant portion of the bcheckrc file below).
Also, no messages from fsck itself are printed.
This is because the fsstat command has completed with exit code 0 and
the script runs exit before it gets to fsck.  This is not good, since
we had a corrupted root file system; to fix it I had to boot from another
root partition and fsck the original root file system manually.
How a command like fsstat can determine when a root file system needs
checking without actually running fsck is beyond me.  Just removing
the fsstat line does not help.  The root file system does get checked,
but even it is OK, it exits with exit code 4 and reboots the system,
checks the root file system, exits with exit code 4, ad infinitum.

bcheckrc_ffs() {
	fsstat $ROOTFS  >/dev/null 2>&1 && exit 0; 

	fsck.ffs -d -y $ROOTFS 
	case $? in
	0)	echo "fsck.ffs: finished normally"
		;;
	2)	#
		# Berkeley fsck semantics say enter single user now.
		# Wish I could.
		#
		echo "fsck.ffs: received SIGQUIT -- ignored."
		;;
	4)	echo "\nAutomatically Rebooting UNIX."
		uadmin 1 1;
		echo "Auto-reboot failed.  Reboot UNIX manally."
		;;
	8)	echo "fsck.ffs: abnormal exit."
		;;
	12)	echo "fsck.ffs: received SIGINTR -- disk checks terminated."
		;;
	*)	echo "fsck.ffs: unknown exit status."
		;;
	esac


P.S.
The message should read
Checking root file system (/dev/root) automatically.
The variable in the shell script is in the wrong case, but this is
just cosmetic.