Howto maintain an EXT3 filesystem

Posted by Reinoud van Santen on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by Reinoud van Santen
Published on 2011-03-16T11:26:42Z Indexed on 2011/03/16 16:12 UTC
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linux

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ext3

Lately I had several servers which encountered a write error on an EXT3 filesystem and as a result of that remounted the filesystem read-only. Understandably on a production server this causes severe problems. On a reboot the filesystem where fixed but on large partitions this takes a lot of time. After the filesystem was fixed, correcting several errors, the server runs well again.

What can I do to minimize the rate at which this happens? I can't seem to find much information on periodically checking the filesystem(s) on a running server. Is it possible to change the way in which EXT3 / the system handles write errors? What would be a sane solution.

All servers which this is regarding to are running CentOS Linux 5.4 or 5.5.

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