Roger,

> One little annoyance: these machines dual boot, so out of the
> 25 it seems that at least one of them reaches "maximal count"
> everytime the lot of them is brought up. The ensuing fsck takes
> precious class time.  I'd like to figure out how to have a
> cron job do the fsck at night and reset the counter that 
> otherwise triggers the unwelcomed fsck.

The hated auto-fsck business wastes a lot of my time, also,
until I remember to run tune2fs(8) to fix the parameters so
they are less intrusive.

Read the man page, I think it will help you out.  It won't solve
your exact problem but may help to render it irrelevant.  I haven't 
played with all the parameters of tune2fs but I have used a few of them 
with good success.

--
Jim Ockers (ockers@ockers.net)                     Ask me about Linux!
Contact info: please see http://www.ockers.net/

Fight Spam! Join CAUCE (Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email)
at http://www.cauce.org/ .