[conspire] fsck "differences between boot sector and its backup"

[roger at rogerchrisman.com]

Daniel and Rich, thanks for your ideas.

I have now done Daniel's Windows did the file system check, steps 1-6.
It schedued and ran but did not report anything to fix. Both Windows
XP and Kubuntu seem to run fine. I wan't having trouble with either.
But Kubuntu still does fsck during boot and still finds on sda1 (my
Windows XP partition) "differences between boot sector and its
backup." It does nothing about it and proceeds the boot process okay,
but with that delay and possibly some other delays (see NOTE at bottom
of this post).

> You say that "fsck runs" every time you boot Kubuntu.  OK, but it
> runs on which filesystem?  You don't say, but that's important.
> I'm guessing that the Kubuntu bootup process reports that there are
> errors on /dev/sda1, and that it will run dosfsck to try to fix errors.
> Is that correct?

It doesn't say it will, it just does it -- it runs fsck on the whole
drive, I think, during bootup. I didn't tell it to. It quickly finds
nothing wrong with sda6 (my Kubuntu / partition) but studies sda1
about 45 seconds, reports several lines of inconsistencies in sda1 and
that it is doing nothing to fix it. I find no record of this fsck in
dmesg and don't know where else to look for it. I just watch it run by
hitting Alt+F1 during boot up.

There is no apparent trouble running  Windows or Kubuntu.

I'd rather not wait 45 seconds during Kubuntu boot up while fsck does
its check but fix nothing every time, if easily avoided. To get copy
and pasteable output of what basically fsck does during boot up I ran
fsck myself, after login, via sudo in Konsole.

What does fsck mean, below, by "1) Copy original [boot sector] to
backup" and "2) Copy backup [boot sector] to original"?

Might I be relying on a *current* boot sector that is neither of above?

==== 2007.12.10, Roger running fsck again, after doing Danie's steps
1-6 Windows file system check)  =====
roger at spray:~$ sudo fsck /dev/sda1
[sudo] password for roger:
fsck 1.40.2 (12-Jul-2007)
dosfsck 2.11, 12 Mar 2005, FAT32, LFN
There are differences between boot sector and its backup.
Differences: (offset:original/backup)
 430:4e/52, 431:54/65, 432:4c/6d, 433:44/6f, 434:52/76, 435:20/65, 436:69/20
 , 437:73/64, 438:20/69, 439:6d/73, 440:69/6b, 442:73/20, 443:69/6f
 , 444:6e/72, 445:67/20, 446:ff/6f, 447:0d/74, 448:0a/68, 449:44/65
 , 450:69/72, 451:73/20, 452:6b/6d, 453:20/65, 454:65/64, 455:72/69
 , 456:72/61, 457:6f/2e, 458:72/ff, 459:ff/0d, 460:0d/0a, 461:0a/44
 , 462:50/69, 463:72/73, 464:65/6b, 465:73/20, 466:73/65, 467:20/72
 , 468:61/72, 469:6e/6f, 470:79/72, 471:20/ff, 472:6b/0d, 473:65/0a
 , 474:79/50, 475:20/72, 476:74/65, 477:6f/73, 478:20/73, 479:72/20
 , 480:65/61, 481:73/6e, 482:74/79, 483:61/20, 484:72/6b, 485:74/65
 , 486:0d/79, 487:0a/20, 488:00/74, 489:00/6f, 490:00/20, 491:00/72
 , 492:00/65, 493:00/73, 494:00/74, 495:00/61, 496:00/72, 497:00/74
 , 498:00/0d, 499:00/0a, 506:bf/cb, 507:cc/d8
1) Copy original to backup
2) Copy backup to original
3) No action
? 3
roger at spray:~$
==================================================

NOTE: *weird black screen for minutes during boot up.* Kubuntu boots
in about 1 3/4 minutes when I view the boot console via Alt+F1,
including its 45 seconds fsck of sda1. But it takes 3.5 to 5 minutes
to boot up if I don't view the boot console. The reason I view the
boot console at all is that Kubuntu 7.10 shows a worrisome black
screen for a long time -- minutes -- after Grub and before the GUI
Login screen. *Weird*! Why does boot up take 2 - 3 minutes longer when
I do not view the boot up process?

Grub
Can Grub do something to help resolve the "boot sector"
inconsistencies fsck reports?


Thanks,
Roger :-)
(This is a Compaq Presario X1000 -- boot time would normally be more
like 1 minute I think. A custom kernel however I would rather not mess
with. I'm not good at doing them correctly. I'm willing to wait longer
for generic kernel boots.)