Comment 10 for bug 209416

Actually, that won't replicate the problem you're trying to replicate. In order to do that, you need to induce an error which causes e2fsck to exit with a preenhalt statement when you run it with the -p option.

So for example:

# debugfs -w -R "write /etc/motd test-file" /tmp/foo.img
debugfs 1.40.8 (13-Mar-2008)
Allocated inode: 12
# debugfs -w -R "unlink test-file" /tmp/foo.img
debugfs 1.40.8 (13-Mar-2008)
# debugfs -w -R "set_super_value state 2" /tmp/foo.img
debugfs 1.40.8 (13-Mar-2008)
# e2fsck -p /tmp/foo.img
/tmp/foo.img contains a file system with errors, check forced.
/tmp/foo.img: Unattached inode 12

/tmp/foo.img: UNEXPECTED INCONSISTENCY; RUN fsck MANUALLY.
        (i.e., without -a or -p options)
# echo $?
4