Re: File System conversion -- ideas

[Stewart Smith <stewart@linux.org.au>]

On Sun, Jun 29, 2003 at 03:48:06PM -0400, rmoser wrote:

> Yeppers.  Also that the eventual goal (at least in  my mind) is to allow
> this to be done on a running r/w filesystem safely, which isn't as tough
> a problem as it sounds.

Yes it is. In fact, it is more of a problem then you think.

Think of this simple scenario:
a script is running that downloads a kernel patch, applies it to a tree,
then renames the directory to $1-$patchname.

Half way through this, during the patch, the backup script comes through
and starts to backup the filesystem.


Now - wipe the drive clean at the end and restore it to a sane state.

Doing live things on storage systems without transactions, snapshots or
whatever you want to call them is tricky at best. resizing is going to 
cause headaches.

-- 
Stewart Smith
Vice President, Linux Australia
http://www.linux.org.au (personal: http://www.flamingspork.com)