On Thu, Mar 29, 2001 at 08:02:33PM -0600, emre@visual-cortex.VSRC.UAB.EDU wrote:
> That's really not good, and annoying.  So I figured, since I couldn't really
> find a reason for this, I'll just disable fsck on bootup, since that is what
> seems to cause the problem.  The filesystem might not get repaired, but at
> least I can keep some of it.  So, to my question, does anyone know how to
> disable fsck on bootup?

"Uh, don't do that!"

Corruption isn't caused by fsck, corruption is found and fixed by it. 
The filesystem is a state machine and fsck examines it to determine the
state it was in when the machine went down. Then fsck can correct the
damage to bring the filesystem back into a consistent state. If you
have hardware problems that prevent fsck from fixing things then priority
number 1 is to fix those problems.

If fsck seems to trigger a crash then that crash can probably be triggered
by find / -print. The nightly scripts do just that sort of find, so you
are asking for trouble trying to run with a system that falls over on
medium disk I/O.

The kernel filesystems assume that the disks are stable underneath and
the filesystem is consistent. If you run the kernel with an inconsistent
filesystem because you didn't fsck then you haven't solved anything.
Worse, you've pushed problems off into a random point in the near future
when you will be nailed with a kernel panic and the resulting loss of
data.

Never disable fsck unless you need to for a quick hack and you know
*exactly* what you are doing. If you have to ask how to disable fsck
on boot then you do not know *exactly* what you are doing.
-- 
Kevin P. Neal                                http://www.pobox.com/~kpn/

Seen on bottom of IBM part number 1887724:
DO NOT EXPOSE MOUSE PAD TO DIRECT SUNLIGHT FOR EXTENDED PERIODS OF TIME.