[Solved] File system check on system startup

[kajasie]

The message in journal is this:

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file system check on root device was skipped because of an unmet condition check

What is the cause of this message and is it something to aware of?

[FreewheelinFrank]

We need to know the condition that was unmet. What is the full line? What is the output of the following?

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$ systemctl status systemd-fsck-root.service

On my system I have this in journalctrl:

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Jan 04 06:06:15 lenovo-debian-xfce systemd[1]: systemd-fsck-root.service - File System Check on Root Device was skipped because of an unmet condition check (ConditionPathExists=!/run/initramfs/fsck-root).

And this from systemctl status systemd-fsck-root.service

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○ systemd-fsck-root.service - File System Check on Root Device
     Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/systemd-fsck-root.service; enabled-runtime; preset: enabled)
     Active: inactive (dead)
  Condition: start condition failed at Sat 2025-01-04 06:06:15 GMT; 1h 32min ago
             └─ ConditionPathExists=!/run/initramfs/fsck-root was not met
       Docs: man:systemd-fsck-root.service(8)

This could be the e2scrub_reap.service trying to check a LVM that doesn't exist.

https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php ... 925&page=2

Your condition may be different.

Another reason for the message seems to be having the btrfs file system where fsck does not work, in which case the condition would be

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systemd[1]: File System Check on Root Device was skipped because of an unmet condition check (ConditionPathIsReadWrite=!/).

https://forum.manjaro.org/t/file-system ... ite/142688

So we need to know the unmet condition.

[kajasie]

The output of:

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$ systemctl status systemd-fsck-root.service

is the same as you wrote it.

[Aki]

Hello @kajasie,

The output of:

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$ systemctl status systemd-fsck-root.service

is the same as you wrote it.

So the unmet condition in your log is also this, isn't it ?

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ConditionPathExists=!/run/initramfs/fsck-root was not met

According to the "systemd.unit — Unit configuration" manual page:

ConditionPathExists=

Check for the existence of a file. If the specified absolute path name does not exist, the condition will fail. If the absolute path name passed to ConditionPathExists= is prefixed with an exclamation mark ("!"), the test is negated, and the unit is only started if the path does not exist.

According to the systemd changelog [1]:

* Skip systemd-fsckd autopkgtest if /run/initramfs/fsck-root exists, i. e. the initramfs already ran fsck.

So the systemd-fsck-root.service does not check by default the root file system if the file /run/initramfs/fsck-root exists; i.e.:

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$ sudo ls -la /run/initramfs/fsck-root
Password: 
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0  6 gen 16.51 /run/initramfs/fsck-root

The /run/initramfs/fsck-root is created by the initramfs functions (from initramfs-tools package) here:

• initramfs-tools/0.145/scripts/functions/

Hope this helps.

--
[1] sources / systemd / 257.1-7 / debian / changelog

[kajasie]

As I understand it's normal behavior and there's nothing to worry about. Thank you very much.