Silly questions

[Lenny Tropiano]

In article <Dec.3.14.05.03.1989.9674 at toccata.rutgers.edu> 
rlr at toccata.rutgers.edu (Rich Rosen) writes:
[...]
|>2. Recently I started playing with /etc/rc to shorten the bringup time of the
|>box.  I didn't want to comment out the fsck entirely, I just wanted it to be
|>skipped over if the machine had previously shut down cleanly.  I saw a trick
|>that I think accomplishes this in a SUN /etc/rc.  It looks for a file called
|>/fastboot, and if it's there, /etc/rc skips over the fsck, and then rm -f's
|>/fastboot.  The shutdown procedures (/etc/shutdown and an /etc/qshut shell
|>I hacked up) re-create the file /fastboot for next time.  If perchance the
|>machine craps out, /fastboot is not recreated, and the full fsck of /etc/rc
|>takes place.  My question:  is this a reasonable and safe practice on my
|>part?  Is there a better way, and are there other ways to quicken the startup
|>process that are safe and reasonable?
|>
[...]

This is probably a safe way of doing things.  I wrote a small set of 
boot scripts and a program called "fsokay" which will only fsck the
filesystems if it's considered "dirty" (or not OK).  This is done by seeing
what is in /etc/mnttab at boot-time, and fsck those filesystems.  At shutdown
time the /etc/mnttab is cleared through a series of "umount" calls (for
filesystems other than "/" root) and a "> /etc/mnttab".

If you are interested in seeing *my* solution to this, grab the /etc/fsokay
package from the ICUS Archives (see the posting about the archives that
was posted earlier this month...).

fsokay.sh.Z		CS	Improved UNIX-pc /etc/rc script and a

-Lenny
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