On Nov 11, 2013, at 5:43 AM, Stan Hoeppner [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

What about filesystem state? Does it matter if a filesystem is mounted when check is run?

I'm not an EXT user.  See "man e2fsck".

With XFS you can check while mounted using "xfs_repair -n [device]", but
no repairs will be performed, you simply get a report.  To repair a
damaged XFS filesystem use the same command sans "-n" on the unmounted
filesystem.  xfs_repair will abort if the filesystem is mounted, and
"-n" is not specified.  xfs_repair is not to be automated via
script/cron.  It is only to be run if/when errors are encountered,
usually after a crash, power loss, controller failure, etc.

Oh, I meant 'check' as in

echo check > /sys/block/$DEVICE/md/sync_action

That, and I also read on my distro's wiki that 'check' will pick up where it was interrupted automatically in those cases when a system is rebooted before 'check' is complete. Well, apparently it does not work that way because I was only some 4% into 'check' yesterday evening, and after resume from sleep mdstat does not show that 'check' is running. So, does the distro's wiki contain erroneous information?

Ivan