What does this kernel error mean and how should I respond?

Question

The following except is taken from the logwatch of a production LAMP web server I'm about to inherit. It is a dedicated Dell server running CentOS 5 with RAID 1 across two 1TB drives.

I have little to no experience with anything other than configuring Apache, PHP and MySQL (I don't know much about the L in LAMP) so I'm unsure what to do about the following:

WARNING:  Kernel Errors Present
    EXT3-fs warning: mounting fs with errors, running e2fsck ...:  1 Time(s)

 1 Time(s): EXT3 FS on sdb1, internal journal
 1 Time(s): EXT3 FS on sdc1, internal journal
 1 Time(s): EXT3-fs warning: maximal mount count reached, running e2fsck is recommended
 2 Time(s): EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
 2 Time(s): kjournald starting.  Commit interval 5 seconds

What do these errors mean in Layman's terms? What is your recommended course of action? Any advice is very much appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Solution

That is not a hard error at all. ext3 has a parameter to configure "every X mounts or Y days the filesystem should be checked". Your "error" just says that exactly this is the case. There is nothing to worry about.

You can configure this behaviour with tune2fs.

If you want an fsck every 100 mounts:

tune2fs -c 100 /dev/sdx1

And to set the time limit (in this case to 90 days):

tune2fs -i 90d /dev/sdx1

If you want to turn it off set both parameters to "0"

Comments

[muellerelias]

Thanks. So e2fsck is the program to check and repair for disk errors and tune2fs is the program to configure reminders to run e2fsck?

[Pascal Schmiel]

tune2fs can do much more than this, but basicaly you are right.