Re: [RFC] Ext3 online defrag

Jeff Garzik
2006-10-24T04:14:37Z

On Mon, Oct 23, 2006 at 06:31:40PM +0400, Alex Tomas wrote:
> isn't that a kernel responsbility to find/allocate target blocks?
> wouldn't it better to specify desirable target group and minimal
> acceptable chunk of free blocks?

The kernel doesn't have enough knowledge to know whether or not the
defragger prefers one blkdev location over another.

When you are trying to consolidate blocks, you must specify the
destination as well as source blocks.

Certainly, to prevent corruption and other nastiness, you must fail if
the destination isn't available...

(ext2meta did all this...)

Jeff