Number of hard links limit

[Sami Liedes <sliedes@cc.hut.fi>]

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Hi,

There's been discussion before on this list on the very small number
of hard links supported by btrfs.[1][2] In those threads, an often
asked question has been if there's a real world use case the limit
breaks. Also it has been pointed out that a fix for this would need a
disk format change.

As discussed in bug #15762 [3], there are certainly real-world use
cases this limitation breaks. I don't usually like to bring up my pet
bugs on mailing lists, and I'm sorry for doing it here, but if it
indeed needs a disk format change, I think this should be considered
before the format is set in stone. I won't personally lose my sleep if
this is not fixed - I can use other filesystems for backuppc and other
similar systems, although I'd be disappointed to see a production
backup system unexpectedly fail because of this - just that I think
it's better to think about this before things are set in stone.

I'd venture to guess that if I have hit this limit with the very small
amount of btrfs use I've done, thousands of others are going to hit it
when btrfs is the default filesystem of distributions.

	Sami


[1] http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.file-systems.btrfs/4589
[2] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.file-systems.btrfs/3427
[3] https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15762

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