[KLUG Members] Defrag'ing ext3 filesystems?

[Peter Buxton]

On Wed, Oct 02, 2002 at 12:11:12PM -0400, Adam Williams wrote:

> > Okay, all the usenet messages I've been reading about ext2/3 not
> > needing to be defragmented are full of crap!

> "...This means that fragmentation is guaranteed to get worse over
> time, and the only way to fix it is to wipe the filesystem clean, and
> restore all the original files from a backup."

> You'd have to convert your ext3 back to ext2, defragment, and then
> convert back to ext3.

ext3 *is* ext2 with a /.journal file.  I booted off an initrd (to avoid
burning a CD-ROM or needing multiple floppies) and defragged my
unmounted ext3 drive.

One thing I noticed before this was the super improvement in speed when
I cp'ed/mv'ed my ~/Mail folder there and back again. I have a sent-mail
mbox folder that, of course, does nothing but get longer and longer but
ver-y slow-ly. Mutt's time to open that folder went from a second or so
to instantaneous.

> http://www.rpmfind.net//linux/RPM/contrib/libc6/i386/defrag-0.73-5.i386.html
> 
> I haven't used it in awhile,  I don't know how much it will like newer
> 2.4.x kernerls.  It certainly knows nothing about ext3 filesystems.
> 
> Want to start making BS-Ware PRO again?

For XFS? I thought Red Hat already supported XFS out of the box?

-- 
http://www.killdevil.org/~peter