DCHECK

A program to manage linux filesystem checks
By David M. Balean
dcheck.png

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Introduction
This describes dcheck version 1.1.0 for managing linux filesystem checks. It requires Gtk 3, tune2fs and fdisk.

To install in Ubuntu, download the RPM and convert it to DEB format using the command:-

$ alien -d dcheck-1.1.0-1.fc18.x86_64.rpm

from the command line. The resulting .deb file can usually be installed by clicking on it with the mouse. To install on a non-x86_64 compatible system such as i386 or sparc, the tar file will have to be downloaded and compiled from scratch.
An rpm spec file is included, so an alternative is to first create an rpm file from the command line using:-

$ rpmbuild -ta dcheck-1.1.0.tar.gz

and then use the alien command on the resulting rpm file.

Brief Description
This is basically a GUI frontend for tune2fs but only a few options are available. The trigger for creating this program was that in some Linux distributions it is not possible to stop a disk check on start-up. If the user has a large filesystem to be checked  -  hard disks are now available measured in Terabytes - the user has to wait a very long time which can be most inconvenient. This program enables the user to force a specified filesystem check at the next mount and prevent checks of a specified filesystem. Note that the user has to be root. A GUI frontend to su/sudo is used for convenience.

If filesystem is managed by dcheck and the command  dcheck  is appended to the start-up sequence then booting prevents further disk checks until the next time the user decides to have one, using dcheck of course. Without dcheck in the start-up sequence the filesystem will be mounted 9998 times before a disk check occurs, otherwise on the next boot-up after the check the 9998 is  restored to -1.

If the filesystem was not managed by dcheck the filesystem can be remounted up to the existing maximum number of times before a further disk check unless the maximum number was 0 or -1 in which case the value is arbitrarily set to 10. However, it does seem to be that if mount-count-dependent checks are disabled by setting the maximum to 0  or -1 then time-dependent checks are also disabled.

The usual place for user commands at start-up is in the file  rc.local.
    In Fedora this is normally found at /etc/rc.d/rc.local.      
    In Ubuntu and Debian it is normally at /etc/rc.local.

A pop-up menu is available by right-clicking in any part of the main window. Also numerous tooltips are provided to help the user.

Some Screen Shots
Main Window
dcheck_main_window.png


Change Last Check Window
  change_last_check_window.png

Status Window
dcheck_status_window.png

Popup Menu
dcheck_popup.png

Download dcheck-1.1.0.tar.gz              HERE
(size 6684.0KB - source files)

Download dcheck-1.1.0-1.fc18.x86_64.rpm   HERE
(size304.6 KB - Fedora 17 binary for x86_64)
THE END