fsck happens silently - this looks like the machine is frozen.

Binary package hint: plymouth

When fsck happens on a large disk, it looks like the machine is frozen. Well, not quite -- the little dots on the screen tell you it's trying to do something, but when they keep going for 15 minutes, one begins to believe that something serious has gone wrong. (After all, the normal boot time is more like 15 seconds...) This has cause me to reboot the darned box several times and eventually use a live CD so that I could mount the disks by hand, one at a time.

If a naive user buys a terabyte disk and fills it with videos, his first fsck (which happens about 6 months after installation) could cause him to reinstall the entire O/S.

The *really* bad use case is when you use a Ubuntu laptop for a presentation at a conference. You're standing in front of 300 people, you turn your laptop on, and it starts booting, and you wait, and wait, and three helpful people from the audience come up to try to fix it. It gets rebooted 4 times. Meanwhile, you're trying to give your presentation verbally, without the computer, while the audience is distracted by all the computer repair attempts. It is a career-wrecking disaster, and all the while it is saying "Ubuntu" on the screen...

Day after tomorrow, I'm off to give a talk, using my Ubuntu laptop, running Natty. I'll fsck the disks today...

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
Package: plymouth 0.8.2-2ubuntu23
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-8.42-generic 2.6.38.2
Uname: Linux 2.6.38-8-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: fglrx
Architecture: amd64
Date: Mon May 2 08:15:54 2011
DefaultPlymouth: /lib/plymouth/themes/xubuntu-logo/xubuntu-logo.plymouth
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" - Release amd64 (20101007)
MachineType: Gateway GT5676
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcFB: 0 VESA VGA
ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/vmlinuz-2.6.38-8-generic root=UUID=339a3173-842e-4a3b-aa5e-988e34ba81c6 ro quiet splash vt.handoff=7
SourcePackage: plymouth
TextPlymouth: /lib/plymouth/themes/xubuntu-text/xubuntu-text.plymouth
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to natty on 2011-04-30 (1 days ago)
dmi.bios.date: 02/18/2008
dmi.bios.vendor: American Megatrends Inc.
dmi.bios.version: 7B3G1P04
dmi.board.asset.tag: To Be Filled By O.E.M.
dmi.board.name: Not Available
dmi.board.vendor: Gateway
dmi.board.version: Not Available
dmi.chassis.asset.tag: To Be Filled By O.E.M.
dmi.chassis.type: 3
dmi.chassis.vendor: Gateway
dmi.chassis.version: 1.0
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnAmericanMegatrendsInc.:bvr7B3G1P04:bd02/18/2008:svnGateway:pnGT5676:pvr7B3G1P04:rvnGateway:rnNotAvailable:rvrNotAvailable:cvnGateway:ct3:cvr1.0:
dmi.product.name: GT5676
dmi.product.version: 7B3G1P04
dmi.sys.vendor: Gateway