The root filesystem is fscked EVERY time Beta4 boots,
except possibly the first time.  Messages on screen
during boot:

  Checking root filesystem  
  /1 not cleanly unmounted, check forced.
  [followed by the fsck output]

This is a fresh "Custom" install of Beta4 with the default package set.
The behavior is the same when all optional packages are excluded.

To exclude other factors, I rebooted several times immediatly after
installing, without logging in.  Same results -  fsck each time.

RH6.2 agrees that this Beta4 root partition needs checking:

When RH6.2 is booted on this multiboot machine, 
it gives the SAME messages about the Beta4 root partition.
Here is the RH6.2 fstab entry:
  /dev/hda7  /betaroot  ext2  defaults,noauto  1 2  # Beta4 root
RH6.2 does the fsck only once after each Beta4 bootup.