Bug#686895: initscripts: /forcefsck: fsck -f undefined (e2fsck-ism)

[Thorsten Glaser]

On Sat, 9 Mar 2019, Dmitry Bogatov wrote:

> As you convincingly remarked below, we may want honor `test -f /forcecheck'
> for every filesystem, whose `fsck' supports `-f' option. As far as I
> follow the thread, it is:
>
> 	ext2 ext3 ext4 reiserfs

Interesting that acceptance of that parameter is so low.

>  * buster+1: big deprecation warning
>  * buster+2: /forcecheck is ignored, big warning is printed
>  * buster+3: /forcecheck is ignored silently.

I don’t like this plan… people are used that such a file can
exist and gets used, but they use it rarely enough that multiple
releases can pass before they need it again.

Better to document it. Also…

> But I really want to have some transition plan to get rid of
> /forcecheck, something like:

… you might like that tune2fs can now (1.45.0-1, not yet in
buster, officially not likely to make it but we can hope) set
a flag force_fsck that next boot’s auto e2fsck will honour.
I’m assuming this works for ext2/ext3/ext4; ask tytso if unsure.

So just print a warning (in the first upload after buster) and
recommend using that instead, *AND* document in /usr/share/doc/…/
that the file should not be used any more, and get the reiserfs
people (and others) to invent something similar. It’s more granular
(per filesystem) and thus better anyway.

bye,
//mirabilos
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