On May 07, 2007 19:16 +0530, Aneesh Kumar K.V wrote: > Theodore Tso wrote: > >Actually, changing the inode size is actually going to be more useful > >to a larger number of people, since they can use it today to support > >in-inode EA's. In addition, changing the inode size must be done > >off-line, whereas it's not so clear that off-line conversion to > >extents is the best way to go (more on that below). > > That way we don't need to add kernel code that convert ext3 inode to > ext4 inode while defragmentation. Last time i looked at the online > defrag code, i was not able to figure out a easy way to take indirect > map inode as input, then defrag the same and write the result in extent > map. I think the online defrag code _should_ be fairly easily made to handle defrag of block-mapped files, so long as it is always creating extent- mapped files in the end. All that should be necessary is to have the kernel read data from the block-mapped file and write it into the newly mapped blocks. That functionality needs to exist for a long time anyways to support upgrading the filesystem so it shouldn't be a huge burden. Cheers, Andreas -- Andreas Dilger Principal Software Engineer Cluster File Systems, Inc. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-ext4" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
