Re: [CALL FOR TESTING] Make Ext3 fsck way faster [2.6.24-rc6 -mm patch]

[Daniel Phillips <phillips@phunq.net>]

On Tuesday 15 January 2008 03:04, Andrew Morton wrote:
> I'm wondering about the real value of this change, really.
>
> In any decent environment, people will fsck their ext3 filesystems
> during planned downtime, and the benefit of reducing that downtime
> from 6 hours/machine to 2 hours/machine is probably fairly small,
> given that there is no service interruption.  (The same applies to
> desktops and laptops).
>
> Sure, the benefit is not *zero*, but it's small.  Much less than it
> would be with ext2.  I mean, the "avoid unplanned fscks" feature is
> the whole reason why ext3 has journalling (and boy is that feature
> expensive during normal operation).
>
> So...  it's unobvious that the benefit of this feature is worth its
> risks and costs?

Since I am waiting for an Ext3 fsck to complete right now, I thought I 
would while away the time by tagging on my "me too" to the concensus 
that faster fsck is indeed worth the cost, which is (ahem) free.

Regards,

Daniel