Issue

Linux (appropriately) checks filesystems after a number of boot cycles.

Cause

This is by design. By default, ext[2,3,4] filesystems are automatically checked every 34 mounts or 180 days (whichever comes first).

Resolution

In some cases (ephemeral machine instances in a cloud) this behavior is undesirable. It may be tuned with the following:

To disable it use the following at the terminal:

tune2fs -c 0 -i 0 /dev/hdXY

Set it to check after 30 system boots

tune2fs -c 30 -i 0 /dev/hdXY

Also ensure that your /etc/fstab file reflects a similar setting. The sixth column should contain a 0 (never check) rather than a 1 (check at boot).