Linked by Rahul on Sat 18th Oct 2008 11:29 UTC
While Ext4 was originally merged in 2.6.19, it was marked as a development filesystem. It has been a long time coming but as planned, Ext4dev has been renamed to Ext4 in 2.6.28 to indicate its level of maturity and paving the way for production level deployments. Ext4 filesystem developer Ted Tso also endorsed Btrfs as a multi-vendor, next generation filesystem and along with the interest from Andrew Morton, Btrfs is planned to be merged before 2.6.29 is released. It will follow a similar development process to Ext4 and be initially marked as development only.
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Member since:2005-07-24
Of course it is. Believe it or not, such technical challenges are OS-neutral 
Incorrect. Fragmentation and its consequences are filesystem (and workload) specific. Unix/Linux filesystems historically, with the notable exception of Reiser4, have been quite resistant to fragmentation.
For example, I just spot checked my busiest server, formatted ext3, which has a workload that consists of:
- 60 concurrent Gnome desktop sessions via XDMCP and NX (Web/Mail/Wordprocessing/Spreadsheet, etc.)
- 100 concurrent sessions of a point of sale package
- Intranet web/application server
- Database server
- Internal dhcp server
- Internal name server
- Samba file and print server for legacy Windows stations
- Other stuff
It has been operating for a little under a year and currently exhibits only 6.6% fragmentation.
That said, there are may be workloads that result in more fragmentation. But low to mid single digit percentages are what I typically see. In fact, in my 20+ years of administering various Unix/Linux systems, I have never at any time been in a situation in which I felt any need for a defragmenter. But as a friend of mine was fond of saying, "it's better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it".
Unfortunately, considering the number of new Linux users coming from a Windows background, I expect to see lots of senseless recommendations to "defrag the hard drive" in the not too distant future. For "performance" reasons... and even as an attempt to fix problems. Remember that Linspire was forced, by popular user request, to add a virus checker to their distro. Because "everyone knows" that its dangerous to run a computer without one because it might get a "computer virus".
Edited 2008-10-18 20:33 UTC
Member since:2007-08-20
Unix/Linux filesystems historically, with the notable exception of Reiser4, have been quite resistant to fragmentation.
Why is that? Someone more knowledgeable than I could probably point to some specific aspects of unix filesystem design that reduce fragmentation. But it was an issue for the designers to consider when the fs was designed, and is still an issue for people working on new filesystems today. How well that issue is dealt with by particular operating systems or particular filesystems is a separate question. (FAT certainly was notoriously bad.)
Edited 2008-10-18 21:30 UTC
Member since:2007-02-17
- 60 concurrent Gnome desktop sessions via XDMCP and NX (Web/Mail/Wordprocessing/Spreadsheet, etc.)
- 100 concurrent sessions of a point of sale package
- Intranet web/application server
- Database server
- Internal dhcp server
- Internal name server
- Samba file and print server for legacy Windows stations
- Other stuff
- 100 concurrent sessions of a point of sale package
- Intranet web/application server
- Database server
- Internal dhcp server
- Internal name server
- Samba file and print server for legacy Windows stations
- Other stuff
Nice. Very nice.
What distro do you use, and how much RAM does all this take?
Have you thought of splitting the load between a small number of lesser servers?
Member since:2005-06-29
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2007-08-20
Of course it is. Believe it or not, such technical challenges are OS-neutral