How do I schedule FSCK to run automatically?

Using cron to schedule an FSCK

  • By default, a fsck is forced after 30 reboots or 180 days.
  • To avoid issues such as this, we recommend scheduling fsck to run a basic weekly check on your server to identify and flag errors. - Doing so can prevent unwanted, forced fsck from running in situations such as this one. - You can then, plan for a time at which a full system fsck is run.

For more info on running fsck please click here For more info on scheduling tasks under Linux click check

The following example syntax will add a weekly scheduled scan-only fsck and output the results to a log file for review.

crontab -e

enter the following text substituting partition with your root partition.

@weekly fsck -nv /dev/*partition* > /var/log/weekly_fsck

When saving, do not change the existing file name.

PLEASE NOTE–

This does not eliminate the need for a fsck. You will still need to schedule a manual fsck.

To Force a fsck using shutdown command

shutdown -rF now

Bypass a fsck using shutdown command

shutdown -rf now

Note: Capital F will Force a FSCK, lowercase f skips a FSCK.

FSCK will sometimes require the root password be entered on the console in order to repair some issues with the filesystem, contact our support department if your server does not respond after a reboot.