Can Ext3 HDD recover from power outage?

[bodhi]

Question for the experts:

I'm planning to install ArchLinux ARM on a SATA 2.5 HDD as a EXT3 boot drive without an UPS. Will it recover successfully from power outage when I cold start the Pogoplug Pro again after that? Is a manual recovery step needed (i.e. must fsck be run manually)?

Thanks!

[Cybertimber2009]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('bodhi', 'Q')uestion for the experts:

I'm planning to install ArchLinux ARM on a SATA 2.5 HDD as a EXT3 boot drive without an UPS. Will it recover successfully from power outage when I cold start the Pogoplug Pro again after that? Is a manual recovery step needed (i.e. must fsck be run manually)?

Thanks!

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cybertimber2009', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('bodhi', 'Q')uestion for the experts:
Manual based on my experience.
Hurricane Irene came through my state and caused multiple power flickers. One did manage to mess up my pogo (which surprised me since I'm on a flash drive & no activity), and required a manual fsck via another linux system I have.

[slycat]

Via crontab I have my OS drive backed-up every Sunday morning after a 'pacman -Scc' and deleting orphans, and keeping only the latest 2 backups (one being Pre-Scc just in case). I have only had to restore once and that was my own fault messing with a samba share on the root dir >.<

Had a power outage a couple of days ago. Quick fsck on the drive before booting the plug back up (no errors found however) and then everything booted up once power came back.

EDIT: Ext3/4 is what my pro is running

[bodhi]

@slycat,

So the bottom line is we're going to need to remove the hard disk and run fsck on a PC somewhere and then put it back to the Pogo Pro to start booting again?

Thanks for the info!
-bodhi

[slycat]

Well AFAIK the plug won't boot into fsck at all (maybe since the boot is being rerouted from the nand?) and therefore cannot check itself. At least it never worked for me and some threads have made mention that fsck won't execute. So to be safe, before the plug booted again I connected the drive to a linux machine and ran the fsck.ext4 from there.

It isn't "necessary" but should any errors occur and you believe it could be solved with a harddrive check, then do it. I had a couple of brown-outs that knocked off the power to the plug but it booted back with zero problem. That's why when I ran the fsck I didn't get any warnings or errors . The time I had to restore was due to me being a little reckless with my root dir, not the power outage.

My two cents: use ext3/4 for the security of the journal. Should something go wrong, fsck it. But chances are it will come back with no problems. I just added the backup to cron.weekly for peace-of-mind. But if booting from a flash keep it ext2 to lower the number of I/Os.

[bodhi]

Thanks! I do have Ext2 USB flash as boot drive on the Dockstar, and it is always unbootable after power outage. That's why I was hoping for a better way of restarting with EXT3 HDD as boot drive.