OFW and journal recovery warning

[Yioryos Asprobounitis]

When booting the XO-1 (q2e45) or XO-1.5 (q3a61) from  an ext3 formatted USB stick or external SDcard,  the OFW reports that the "ext3 journal needs recovery". 
However, stopping the boot process at this exact point (power button), rebooting from the internal flash/nand (running F14 builds) and fsck.ext3'ing the external device reports that the file system is clean.
Furthermore, rebooting immediately after that from the external device there is no OFW warning.

I tried to see how OFW determines the journaling status but is beyond me I'm afraid. 
How does it? and why is it reporting journal issues when the fs is actually clean?

I would appreciate any suggestions
Thx