Comment 1 for bug 28053

Message-ID: <email address hidden>
Date: Fri, 06 Jan 2006 00:07:20 +0100
From: Wouter Verhelst <email address hidden>
To: Debian Bug Tracking System <email address hidden>
Subject: checkroot.sh: does not properly handle fsck exit states

Package: initscripts
Version: 2.86.ds1-6
Severity: critical
Justification: may cause data loss

Hi,

I just noticed that my laptop, at bootup, started an fsck for the root
filesystem, claiming that it was a filesystem with errors. When it was
about 20% done, it exited, and told me to rerun it manually. I expected
a prompt for my root password and to be put in single-user mode, but
this did not happen; instead, my system did a normal boot.

This should _never_ happen! If the fsck fails, all sorts of bad things
might have happened with the file system; continueing the boot at that
point is a very good way to lose all your data.

I was lucky to have spotted it...

-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing')
Architecture: powerpc (ppc)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.14.4
Locale: LANG=nl_BE.UTF-8@euro, LC_CTYPE=nl_BE.UTF-8@euro (charmap=UTF-8)

Versions of packages initscripts depends on:
ii coreutils 5.93-5 The GNU core utilities
ii dpkg 1.13.11 package maintenance system for Deb
ii e2fsprogs 1.38+1.39-WIP-2005.12.10-1 ext2 file system utilities and lib
ii libc6 2.3.5-11 GNU C Library: Shared libraries an
ii lsb-base 3.0-13 Linux Standard Base 3.0 init scrip
ii util-linux 2.12r-2 Miscellaneous system utilities

initscripts recommends no packages.

-- no debconf information