Persistent “disk will be checked…” in the message of the day (motd) even after reboot

Question

I see that there are some other threads that mention this error, but I have tried the solutions with no luck.

When I log into my 12.04 Server, I get the message:

/dev/sdb1 will be checked for errors at next reboot
/dev/sdc1 will be checked for errors at next reboot

The problem is that the check is never done and I continue to get the messages. I ran a fsck on both drives and they are fine.

Answer 1

This is a known bug in Ubuntu 11.04 and apparently still exists in 12.04 LTS. What happens is what you described: you keep getting the notification even though there is nothing wrong with your hard drive and no checks are scheduled/will be done.

It's caused by the /usr/lib/update-notifier/update-motd-fsck-at-reboot script generating a /var/lib/update-notifier/fsck-at-reboot file with a timestamp in the future. The previous link has a convoluted solution from one of the Ubuntu maintainers (Steve Langasek), but it may be simplest to just do this:

1. Open a terminal with Ctrl-Alt-T

2. Type:

   sudo rm /var/lib/update-notifier/fsck-at-reboot
   

3. Exit the terminal and reboot (or logout/login).

Answer 2

I had this same problem today - turned out in my /etc/fstab file, the line that had the relevant filesystem, had "0" in the last field, which means don't fsck it on boot. This should have been "1" for the root filesystem, or "2" for any other filesystem.

Also, my motd wasn't updated after the (successful) fsck. You can use this command:

tune2fs -l /dev/something

Then look for a line that says "Last Checked".

Answer 3

This message is NOT a problem. It is an informational message, so you know that next time you reboot your system, Ubuntu will run checks on the filesystem, that's all.

What are the implications?

1. Checking the filesystem may take a very long time if the partition is very large. For example if the partition is several terabytes, expect a very slow boot next time.

2. If you are aware of hardware issues of your disk, you may have problems on the next boot if the filesystem check fails. In this case you may want to backup your important files before the next reboot.

If you have no particular concerns and you don't care that your next boot will be slower than usual, you can ignore the message.

Ubuntu does this filesystem check periodically, apparently every 30 restarts, according to the answer posted in a comment. Why does Ubuntu ask to check my hard drives every so often?