How can I retrieve the mount count for an ext3 volume?

[Alex Hewitt]

Ben Scott wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 8:35 AM, Alex Hewitt <hewitt_tech at comcast.net> wrote:
>   
>> My Ubuntu 8.10 system uses EXT3 for the root filesystem and will
>> automatically fschk the volume every 35 mounts.
>>     
>
>   I see the question's been answered, but here's some general commentary, FWIW.
>
>   I generally find it's more appropriate to use the time interval
> check, and disable the maximum mount count check.  The theory being
> that it doesn't really matter how often you mount the filesystem.  If
> you reboot 5 times a day because you shut your PC off when you're not
> using, that doesn't necessarily mean you need to check every week.
> Contrariwise, if you almost never reboot, that doesn't mean you only
> need to check once per decade.
>
>   Since I like to divide things up into multiple partitions, I can
> also tune based on filesystem usage.  For example, my /tmp partition
> checks every 30 days, but my /usr partition checks every 180 days  The
> theory being that a filesystem with more activity is more likely to
> encounter problems.
>
>   I have my root and boot partitions set to check every mount.  The
> theory being that they're really important.  They're also small in my
> setup, so it only takes a few seconds.
>
>   OTOH, if you have multiple partitions, you can disable the time
> interval and use different mount counts, and avoid checking multiple
> filesystems at once.
>
> -- Ben
> _______________________________________________
> gnhlug-discuss mailing list
> gnhlug-discuss at mail.gnhlug.org
> http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
>
>   

Thanks Ken, Dave and Ben for the answers and thoughtful analysis. I 
currently have essentially one large partition for Linux and another 
large partition for Vista. I think when I set up my next system I'm 
going to make the granularity of the file systems finer by dividing up 
the mount points/partitions. It's been a standard practice for a long 
time to separate system and data partitions/disks primarily for backups 
but in the case of a file system check, it speeds operations enormously.

-Alex