libeatmydata

Apparently, dpkg is so fsck-happy and ext4 is so poorly optimized for fsck that a new Ubuntu install can take twice as long using ext4 as it would with ext3. Also, apparently, the solution to this is a wonderful little library called libeatmydata. This library basically causes fsck calls to be ignored. Should you install libeatmydata? Probably not, as you might guess from the name. If you install it, you risk losing much more data if your machine crashes than you would otherwise. It may also may pose a shutdown issue, since the OS will call fsck before shutdown to help ensure that buffered data is written out to disk. The primary application for libeatmydata seems to be for OS installs. If your machine crashes during an OS install, you'd probably just re-start the install. So, why waste your time with excessive fsck calls?