On Wed, 10 Jun 1998, John Covici wrote:

> I didn't want to redirect the whole sysinit process because I had
> already put in those echo statements and didn't want to confuse things
> further.  Also, I want the screens to remain the same in case
> something else goes wrong where I need sighted assistance.

You probably just need to do:
fsck [options]   > /dev/ttyS0 
or something similar.  I tried doing:
exec > /dev/tty6 2> /dev/tty6 < /dev/tty6
fsck -fV /dev/hdc2
and it worked in interactive mode (hdc2 is a small experimental
partition I use).
fsck -fV /dev/hdc2 > /dev/tty6 2> /dev/tty6 < /dev/tty6
worked similarly.
If that doesn't work, there are other sneaky ways to save the
output in a buffer or coprocess for later logging or reading.

BTW, I have no difficulty remounting this partition read only,
unless there is a file open on it.  

> >The drop to single user shell (sulogin) could be disabled, or you
> >could just type ^D when that happens, to continue on, as the
> >prompt directs (I guess you would have to do this without seeing
> >the prompt?).  But this won't happen if you make sure to use
> >the -a option to fsck, and if it does happen, it may just
> >mean you tried to redirect the interactive output, in which
> >case you have effectively made fsck inoperative (bad).
> 
> But what I really would like to do, if I get that shell I would like
> to run screader or whatever I am using and find out what is happening.

I just checked the sulogin man page, and you are in luck!!  You
can add a tty device argument to sulogin, to redirect to your speech
device, or whatever, and you can even add a timeout, and control
what shell is used.
 
> >> I have modified the bootup scripts so that there are extra echo
> >> statements redirected to the synthesizer so I have some idea of
> >> what is happening.
> >
> >But the echo statements only tell you whether the daemons tried
> >to start, not whether they succeeded.  My modifications to the
> >"functions" script change all that.
> 
> Well, some of them do test return codes, but I'd like to see your mods
> and maybe get some ideas from them.

I will attach my functions script.  Be sure to read the commentary:
it tells you to add some lines to another script or two.

> >> By closing down all the loggers, lpd, cron and a couple of
> >> other processes, I think I can do a safe fsck in read/write
> >> mode -- at least I tried it a couple of times and got no
> >> errors.
> >
> >Sounds pretty risky to me.  If you can't remount it read only, it
> >means you missed some process still writing to the filesystem.
> 
> But maybe its only screader which has something open in read/write
> mode and isn't doing any actual writing.

I doubt it, but fuser can tell you for sure.  There are better ways,
though.  If you do this, eventually you will overlook something 
during a check, and damage your filesystem.  Then there is the
problem of getting all the daemons properly restarted.  That's
what single user mode is for (but it may be broken, as I
mentioned -- ie, you would need to customize it).
 
-- 
L. C. Robinson
reply to infynity@cyberhighway.net (a family account)

People buy MicroShaft for compatibility, but get incompatibility and
instability instead: then they get to buy upgrades to fix it, and get
still more problems.  This is award winning "innovation".