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[OCLUG-Tech] best practice for periodically checking (ext3) filesystems?

What do other people do on (home) servers for checking large ext3 or other journaling filesystems?

It always seems to be the lesser convenient time for a fsck to run when I reboot for a kernel update, even though the count frequency and maximal time are at increased values right now.

A 1 TB disk full of my ripped CDs can take a while to fsck...

As per the man page, I'm not sure it's really a good idea to set tune2fs -i/-c to 0/-1 (never) and then never fsck. But I'm thinking I could do do that AND set a calender or other reminder for me to do a forced reboot and forced check every (how long?). I can reboot and check when fscking time won't be a bother.

I should add that the server runs md RAID1 and is on a UPS. It very rarely goes down for other than a proper shutdown/reboot - now that I don't have a buggy nvidia driver :-p.

(My VPS host in Toronto had a reboot last year and their fscking took fscking hours to run... THAT was a bother.)

Or maybe ext3 is so reliable I can turn checking off forever?

What do you think?

Brett