From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Christoph Hellwig Subject: Re: [PATCH] Add extent conversion support to chattr Date: Tue, 9 Sep 2008 12:50:05 -0400 Message-ID: <20080909165005.GA24816@infradead.org> References: <1220951542-1451-1-git-send-email-aneesh.kumar@linux.vnet.ibm.com> <20080909114647.GA14052@infradead.org> <20080909134347.GB21071@mit.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Cc: Christoph Hellwig , "Aneesh Kumar K.V" , adilger@sun.com, linux-ext4@vger.kernel.org To: Theodore Tso Return-path: Received: from bombadil.infradead.org ([18.85.46.34]:59228 "EHLO bombadil.infradead.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1753796AbYIIQua (ORCPT ); Tue, 9 Sep 2008 12:50:30 -0400 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20080909134347.GB21071@mit.edu> Sender: linux-ext4-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On Tue, Sep 09, 2008 at 09:43:47AM -0400, Theodore Tso wrote: > The alternate is to create an entire new program (e4migrate) just to > trigger a single ioctl. The reality is this is probably going to more > used by ext4 developers than anybody else, since it's rare that you > would want to convert a single file from using indrect blocks to using > extents. In general, most users/system administrators will want to > convert the entire filesystem; eventually this will probably be done > via some combination with the userspace program to trigger online > defrag, but this was just a stopgap measure to allow us to more easily > exercise the kernel code more than anything else. > > So given that this is only to enable extents on a single file, "chattr > +e file" is very much in line with the rest of the chattr interface > for setting other flags. Well, if you think setting a flag is a good interface to convert to extents, then do it all the way and allow setting the extent flag in the kernel through FS_IOC_SETFLAGS instead of having an interface schism.