include filesystem repair facilities in initramfs

[Damien Clauzel]

Binary package hint: busybox

When booting Ubuntu (Karmic), the system will fall into the initramfs prompt if it cannot mount the root volume. This is normal.
But it would be very convenient to be able to repair a file system with fsck.

Busybox does support the fsck applet, but it is not included on Ubuntu. Can this be improved ?

[Woet (woeterman)]

Definitely needed.

[Dario Panico (dariopnc-)]

yeah! why this bug has not been considered?

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

It's not as simple as that. Busybox's fsck applet is only the frontend that calls filesystem-specific fsck implementations, and those implementations are not included in Busybox (rightly so, IMO - I wouldn't want to have to deal with data-loss bugs caused by skew between the standard tools and reimplementations in Busybox).

If we want to include repair facilities in the initramfs (which might well be a good idea), we'll need to arrange for initramfs-tools to copy the appropriate fsck implementation into the initramfs, as well as enabling this applet.