[PLUG] Filesystem issues

[John Jason Jordan]

In the process of fixing my borked Breezy-64 installation I have been
having lots of filesystem errors, discovered by the system on booting.
This prompts a couple b00bie questions. (That was a typo but I decided
it might be appropriate to leave it.)

1) I googled and man-paged on fsck and can't find a way to give a
command that it should be run on the next boot before the filesystem is
mounted. I did try to run it while the system was mounted, but it gave
me dire warnings, so I canceled. Maybe I missed the option that I need.
I can't give the command during boot because there is no command line
then. In Windows the GUI has an option to clean up the disk or
something (never needed it), and if you click on Yes it announces it
will be run on the next boot. What is the Linux way to do this? Or is
there a better way?

2) The filesystem is ext3. Back before I swapped the original 60 GB
4200 hard drive for the new 80 GB 7200 one currently installed, I got
filesystem errors two or three times. Now, with the new drive, I am
getting them more frequently. In ten years of using Windows NT and 2000
I never had a filesystem error using NTFS (except when a hard drive was
dying on me, but that doesn't really count). So is my problem with
ext3? Is it a beta version or something? Or am I just having really bad
luck with flaky hard drives? Should I send the new one back under
warranty? I can't believe I'm having so much trouble. As further
information, the problems are always goofed up inodes. And fsck always
fixes them graciously and without further incident. It's just that this
many errors can't be normal. Admittedly, what I have been doing lately
has resulted in quite a lot of hung systems, kernel panics, and other
problems requiring me to hit the power button to get out -- no keyboard
or mouse. It still seems to me that something is flaky.

My Breezy-64 installation is so hopelessly borked that I am going to
reformat its 60 GB partition and install Dapper-64 on it fresh. I have
been using Dapper-64 on this new installation that I made on an 8 GB
partition in an unused area of the new hard disk. I have played with it
for several days now and figured out how to get everything working
again as before (Broadcom wifi, RealPlayer, Adobe Reader, Firefox-64,
Flash and other plugins), and without needing chroot or ndiswrapper.
Before I reformat the partition I want to consider perhaps using a
different filesystem. Right now I'm not impressed with ext3, but I also
may be blaming it for problems caused by other issues, such as a flaky
hard disk. I also note that I am probably rougher on a filesystem than
most users, considering how I am always trying something that results
in a hung system, so maybe the culprit is me. Some advice from those
with more experience and knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of
the various Linux filesystem types would be gratefully received.