It doesn't matter whether you store your personal data on the partition where the OS is located, or elsewhere. Either way, you may need to know how to run e2fsck on the file system if you want to try to maximally recover data. If you don't know what you are doing, sure, go ahead and run fsck -y. But there is the chance you may lose data that you might have been able to recover if you had more skills.
Note that in the case that you referenced, the kernel had already detected some kind of file system inconsistency. That is the source of the "/dev/sda1 contains a file system with errors, checked force". This should not happen, unless there is some kind of hardware bug, or kernel bug which has led to the file system getting corrupted. This could be caused by flaky/low-quality/failing memory, or flaky/low- quality/failing HDD or SSD. An expert would have to look at the kernel logs for hints to see what might have gone wrong. If the user has regularly been doing backups, then sure, maybe you don't care they can just run "fsck -y". But I don't want to give that advice, only to hear that some graduate student had ten years worth of thesis research, and it wasn't backed up, and they were using the lowest possible cost HDD or SSD that was not reliably storing their data. Sometimes, the best thing to do for low-comptency users, is for them to ask for help, maybe at a local Linux User's Group, so that an expert can try help them out. There is no magic incantation, no kind of "Hocus Pocus" magic set of instructions that will always do the right thing. And to give "low competency users" instructions which might not be the best thing is ultimately, IMHO, going to doing them a grave disservice. P.S. One could argue that a graduate student who has ten years of research on cheap sh*t storage and who hasn't been doing their backups doesn't deserve to graduate with a Ph.D. But that's not a very charitable attitude.... -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Touch seeded packages, which is subscribed to e2fsprogs in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1939238 Title: UNEXPECTED INCONSISTENCY; RUN fsck MANUALLY. Status in e2fsprogs package in Ubuntu: New Bug description: Hello This problem did not occur on my computer. https://nsa40.casimages.com/img/2021/08/07/210807015400327092.png It occurs in users who are not competent. This week, the French forum collapsed over this incident. I think changing the advice phrase might improve understanding of the action to be taken. Can these lines " ( i.e.. without -a or -p options) fsck existed with status code 4 The root file system on /dev/XXXXXXXX requires a manual fsck" become "execute this command 'fsck -y /dev/xxxxxx' to do a manual fsck on the root file system." ProblemType: Bug DistroRelease: Ubuntu 21.04 Package: gnome-terminal 3.38.1-1ubuntu1 ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.11.0-25.27-generic 5.11.22 Uname: Linux 5.11.0-25-generic x86_64 ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu65.1 Architecture: amd64 CasperMD5CheckResult: unknown CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME Date: Sun Aug 8 15:16:28 2021 ExecutablePath: /usr/libexec/gnome-terminal-server InstallationDate: Installed on 2020-08-02 (370 days ago) InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS "Focal Fossa" - Release amd64 (20200423) ProcEnviron: LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8 PATH=(custom, user) SHELL=/bin/bash XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set> SourcePackage: gnome-terminal UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to hirsute on 2021-07-11 (27 days ago) To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/e2fsprogs/+bug/1939238/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages Post to : touch-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
