Re: [RFC] Add new extent structure in ext4

[Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com>]

On Mon, Jan 23, 2012 at 08:51:53PM +0800, Robin Dong wrote:
> Hi Ted, Andreas and the list,
> 
> After the bigalloc-feature is completed in ext4, we could have much more
> big size of block-group (also bigger continuous space), but the extent
> structure of files now limit the extent size below 128MB, which is not
> optimal.
> 
> We could solve the problem by creating a new extent format to support
> larger extent size, which looks like this:
> 
> struct ext4_extent2 {
> 	__le64	ee_block;	/* first logical block extent covers */
> 	__le64	ee_start;	        /* starting physical block */
> 	__le32	ee_len;		/* number of blocks covered by extent */
> 	__le32	ee_flags;	/* flags and future extension */
> };
> 
> struct ext4_extent2_idx {
> 	__le64	ei_block;	        /* index covers logical blocks from 'block' */
> 	__le64	ei_leaf;	        /* pointer to the physical block of the next level */
> 	__le32	ei_flags;	        /* flags and future extension */
> 	__le32	ei_unused;	/* padding */
> };
> 
> I think we could keep the structure of ext4_extent_header and add new
> imcompat flag EXT4_FEATURE_INCOMPAT_EXTENTS2.
> 
> The new extent format could support 16TB continuous space and larger volumes.
> 
> What's your opinion?

Just use XFS.

Cheers,

Dave.
-- 
Dave Chinner
david@fromorbit.com