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Linux's fsck disk-repair tool often runs in an "interactive mode" by default. This means that, if it finds problems, it may ask me questions. But these questions tend to assume that I am a filesystem expert. In practice, I generally have no idea what I should answer to any of the questions.

Why would anyone ever want to use fsck's "interactive mode"?

unforgettableidSupportsMonica
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    As someone who has written Ext3 code, I can tell from experience that a common cause of disk corruption is experts meddling with disk structures. At least these people benefit ;) – MSalters Oct 22 '13 at 07:38
  • @MSalters: Why shouldn't those experts use one of `fsck`'s automatic modes instead of "interactive mode"? – unforgettableidSupportsMonica Oct 23 '13 at 02:12
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    Because those experts generally do have an idea what they did wrong, and how it should be fixed - better than fsck does. – MSalters Oct 23 '13 at 07:47
  • @MSalters: And why would experts ever meddle with disk structures in the first place? – unforgettableidSupportsMonica Oct 31 '13 at 01:06
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    Well, if we didn't, we'd all still use Ext2. Innovation isn't magic, going from Ext2 to Ext3 took more than a decision to increment the number. E.g. you'd want to know what damage an old tool will do, if it expects Ext2 and gets Ext3. – MSalters Oct 31 '13 at 09:10

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