Package: defrag Version: 0.73pjm1-8 Severity: grave On Wed, Nov 01, 2006 at 01:10:50AM +0800, Andreas Dilger wrote: > > So now it was time to defrag, I used this command: > > thor:~# e2defrag -r /dev/vgraid/data > > This program is dangerous to use and any attempts to use it should be > stopped. It hasn't been updated in such a long time that it doesn't > even KNOW that it is dangerous (i.e. it doesn't check the filesystem > version number or feature flags). In fact we need to create a Debian bug report indicating that this package should *NOT* be included when the Debian etch distribution releases. Goswin, I am setting the severity to grave (a release-critical severity) because defrag right now is almost guaranteed to corrupt the filesystem if used with modern ext3 filesystems leading to data loss, and this satisfies the definition of grave. I believe the correct answer is either to (a) make defrag refuse to run if any filesystem features are enabled (at the very least, resize_inode, but some of the other newer ext3 filesystem features make me nervous with respect to e2defrag, or (b) since (a) would make e2defrag mostly useless especially since filesystems with resize inodes are created by default in etch, and as far as I know upstream abandoned defrag a long time ago, that we should simply remove e2defrag from etch and probably from Debian altogether. If you are interested in doing a huge amount of auditing and testing of e2defrag with modern ext3 (and soon ext4) filesystems, that's great, but I suspect that will not at all be trivial, and even making sure e2defrag won't scramble users' data probably can't be achievable before etch releases. Regards, - Ted _______________________________________________ Ext3-users mailing list Ext3-users@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/ext3-users
