Re: Why does fsck.xfs not do what xfs_repair -n does?

[Carlos Maiolino <cmaiolino@redhat.com>]

On Fri, Feb 24, 2017 at 09:49:17PM +0100, Marcel Partap wrote:
> Dear XFS dev crew,
> > fsck.xfs(8)
> >         fsck.xfs - do nothing, successfully
> >         If you wish to check the consistency of an XFS filesystem, or repair a damaged or corrupt XFS filesystem, see xfs_repair(8).
> 
> So there's a FS check command that does not work as with all the other filesystems. Instead of checking the FS, it tells you to use xfs_repair both for - XFS repair.. and XFS check. Whereas in the man page of
> > xfs_repair - repair an XFS filesystem
> it doesn't tell you right at the top that xfs_repair can check XFS. Instead
> > *       -n     No modify mode. Specifies that xfs_repair should […]  *scan  the  filesystem*

Xfs used to have two different tools for that. xfs_check and xfs_repair. This
required one more tool, several more lines of code to be maintained, while
xfs_repair does the check job with '-n' option, so, it was decided to deprecate
xfs_check and keep efforts only in xfs_repair.

> 
> Is this imperative? It does not make any sense to me apart from the quirk.
> 
I am not quite sure what you mean by "imperative" here, but most (if not all)
repair tools, have a dry-run mode with -n, as so, xfs_repair also does. The name
of xfs tool is also kept due historical reasons, once, AFAIK, xfs_repair is the
name for the tool since its beginning.

If you believe that the first description of xfs_repair's man page, should say
something like "check and repair an XFS filesystem", feel free to send a patch
for that, IMHO I really don't see any reason for that, giving that the main goal
of such tools are to fix filesystem inconsistencies.

Cheers

-- 
Carlos