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How does one determine whether fsck operations were performed at bootup. I understand the default fsck config and behaviour, but is there a report or status that shows whether any fsck issues were found or repair operations were performed?

My system console does show a "clean" message but dmesg does not:

...
[  OK  ] Started Create Static Device Nodes in /dev.
         Starting udev Kernel Device Manager...
[  OK  ] Started udev Kernel Device Manager.
         Starting Copy rules generated while the root was ro...
[  OK  ] Started Copy rules generated while the root was ro.
[    6.346472] systemd-fsck[171]: ROOTFS-A: clean, 26178/78240 files, 107613/312576 blocks
...

Perhaps there a standard API to query fsck operations and status, rather than looking at log files?

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  • Hi! I love this question. It seems the answer depends a bit e.g. on what initramfs generator you use (on whether the initramfs uses systemd or not). Since you have given a specific example in your question, could you please specify exactly what OS and version it comes from. Preferably also the version number of your systemd package. And, while I am asking, are you using a specific initramfs generator, or just using the default initramfs that your distribution installed? – sourcejedi Jan 12 '19 at 15:27
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You are looking for the systemd journal. man journalctl can be your entry point. To review the logs for systemd-fsck you can look at:

journalctl -u systemd-fsck*

As you'll see in man journalctl, there are are also machine-friendly output options like JSON. That's as close as you are going to come to an API to query fsck status, besides the other systemd tool for querying service status:

systemctl status systemd-fsck*

As you'll see in man systemctl, it also offers machine-friendly output formats as well.

I'm aware of no way to query fsck status without systemd.

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  • I did try journalctl but realized that it was deconfigured NOT to log from syslog. However, syslog does show the console "clean" message. – awoz Apr 6 '18 at 17:55
  • Regarding systemctl, it only shows the the status of the systemd-fsck service, and its exit code. – awoz Apr 6 '18 at 17:57
  • Github for systemd-fsck also indicates that all fsck "progress" goes to /dev/console, with several unique exits codes. – awoz Apr 6 '18 at 18:00
  • The solution looks like a combination of journal and syslog scrubbing operations. No standard API for status :( – awoz Apr 6 '18 at 18:02
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    @awoz - fsck at boot time is run from initramfs so there's no filesystem to write to, though some distros work around that and save the output to /run/initramfs/* or /var/log/fsck/* – don_crissti Apr 6 '18 at 18:28
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I can confirm don_crissti response above.

For my Beaglebone running Debian 8.3 (Jessie), the result is in /run/initramfs/fsck.log

I have fsck.mode=force and fsck.repair=yes set in /boot/uEnv.txt for Kernel command line options

root@beaglebone:~# more /run/initramfs/fsck.log
Log of fsck -C -f -y -V -t ext4 /dev/mmcblk0p1
Thu Jun 28 13:52:24 2018
fsck from util-linux 2.25.2
[/sbin/fsck.ext4 (1) -- /dev/mmcblk0p1] 
fsck.ext4 -f -y -C0 /dev/mmcblk0p1
e2fsck 1.42.12 (29-Aug-2014)
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Pass 2: Checking directory structure
Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity
Pass 4: Checking reference counts
Pass 5: Checking group summary information
BOOT: 38273/240000 files (0.1% non-contiguous), 284298/958208 blocks

root@beaglebone:~# cat /etc/dogtag
BeagleBoard.org Debian Image 2016-02-15

root@beaglebone:~# more /etc/debian_version
8.3

root@beaglebone:~# uname -a
Linux beaglebone 4.1.17-ti-rt-r48 #1 SMP PREEMPT RT Fri Feb 12 23:46:00 UTC 2016 armv7l GNU/Linux
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