Re: Does "32.1% non-contiguous" mean severely fragmented?

[Theodore Tso <tytso@mit.edu>]

On Tue, Oct 23, 2007 at 07:38:20PM +0900, Tetsuo Handa wrote:
> > Are you sure the file isn't getting written by some background tasks
> > that you weren't aware of?  This seems very strange; what
> > virtualization software are you using?  VMware, Xen, KVM?
> I'm using VMware Workstation 6.0.0 build 45731 for x86_64.
> It seems that there were some background tasks that delays writing.
> I tried the following sequence, "sync" didn't affect.

Or it may be that it takes a while to do a controlled shutdown.

One potential reason for the vmem file being very badly fragmented is
that it might not be getting written in sequential order.  If the
writer is writing the file in random order, then unless you have a
filesystem which can do delayed allocations, the blocks will get
allocated in the other that they are first written, and if the writer
is seeking to random locations to do the write, that's one way that
you can end up with a very badly fragmented file.

Regards,

							- Ted