On Sun, Jan 08, 2006 at 09:13:21AM -0600, Justin Conover wrote: > Can you currently shrink an ext3 lvm online? To elaborate on Arjan's answer: no, and not very likely in the near-term. Expanding a file system is relatively easy, because the new space is not referenced by any existing filesystem user. It is a relatively simple matter to prepare the data structures (block group, free map, etc.) and then update the existing data structures to include the new free space. The last step is very quick, and does not require suspending normal filesystem operations for very long. Shrinking, on the other hand, presents a host of problems, including the need to compact the data below the new boundary, and deal with current users of the filesystem that may, e.g., have a region of some file memory-mapped, or may have I/O in flight. A number of years ago, Andrew Morton (ioctl() to move file blocks), Jeff Garzik (ext2meta), and others experimented with APIs suitable for online defragmentation/optimization, the necessary first step before a filesystem can be shrunk. [Details are available in the ext2-devel and ext3-users archives.] But nobody ever bothered to write the userland code for an online defragmenter. Regards, Bill Rugolsky -- fedora-test-list mailing list fedora-test-list@xxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-test-list