Jim Cornette wrote:
John Summerfied wrote:
Jeff Vian wrote:
Exactly, and IIRC the filesystem knows that if it needs X amount of
space for a file, then Y number of inodes are marked for use for that
file at the beginning. Thus space allocated is as contiguous as is
efficient for read/write on the disk.
If "the filesystem knows that if it needs X amount of space for a
file," that implies there's a way of telling it that.
How's that done? I don't recall any system call for *x (there is one
for OS/2), and one could do it in JCL in IBM's OS in the 60s), but in
the *x world I've never seen a way to do it.
Since the discussions regarding fragmentation on ext3 filesystems was
pretty long running. I decided to try
filefrag /usr/bin/* |sort |grep 'would be'
and the output showed a lot of fragmentation. One of the files was up to
45.
/usr/bin/postgres: 45 extents found, perfection would be 1 extent
I outputted the findings to a file which ended up being around 75 kb
The log files didn't seems to be as fragmented as I expected. Another
pecularity was that some of the files did not seem to be things that I
use much.
Another excerpt from the query.
/usr/bin/php: 52 extents found, perfection would be 1 extent
/usr/bin/php-cgi: 62 extents found, perfection would be 1 extent
My system is running development. This of course means frequently
updated programs. Checking usr/lib showed fragmentation also.
/usr/lib/libXm.so.4: 48 extents found, perfection would be 1 extent
/usr/lib/libXm.so.4.0.0: 48 extents found, perfection would be 1 extent
..
/usr/lib/libxvidcore.so.4: 49 extents found, perfection would be 1 extent
I guess fragmentation is present on the system and probably needs
addressed or a less fragmented filesystem type needs implemented.
extent ^= fragmentation. On filesystems I know, extents can be on
consecutive areas (sectors, blocks, tracks) of disk. You need better
info than that to see whether you have a fragmentation problem. filefrag
will give it to you, but it needs a wrapper to make sense to Mere Mortals.
fwiw
summer@bilby ~]$ sudo filefrag /usr/sbin/postfix /usr/X11R6/lib/libXm*
/usr/sbin/postfix: 1 extent found
/usr/X11R6/lib/libXm.a: 1 extent found
/usr/X11R6/lib/libXm.so: 1 extent found
/usr/X11R6/lib/libXm.so.2: 1 extent found
/usr/X11R6/lib/libXm.so.2.1: 1 extent found
/usr/X11R6/lib/libXm.so.3: 1 extent found
/usr/X11R6/lib/libXm.so.3.0.2: 1 extent found
/usr/X11R6/lib/libXmu.a: 1 extent found
/usr/X11R6/lib/libXmu.so: 2 extents found, perfection would be 1 extent
/usr/X11R6/lib/libXmu.so.6: 2 extents found, perfection would be 1 extent
/usr/X11R6/lib/libXmu.so.6.2: 2 extents found, perfection would be 1 extent
/usr/X11R6/lib/libXmuu.a: 1 extent found
/usr/X11R6/lib/libXmuu.so: 1 extent found
/usr/X11R6/lib/libXmuu.so.1: 1 extent found
/usr/X11R6/lib/libXmuu.so.1.0: 1 extent found
This system was installed as Fedora Core 3, and all these package
subsequently replaced (with force where necessary) with packages I built
myself from RHEL 4 source. That is, they have all been updated after
installation.
Checking lib and bin directories under /usr, I see no more than three
extents.
I note my file placement's different from yours.
--
Cheers
John
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