From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from mx3.redhat.com (mx3.redhat.com [172.16.48.32]) by int-mx1.corp.redhat.com (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id j0RBr4O27174 for ; Thu, 27 Jan 2005 06:53:04 -0500 Received: from rproxy.gmail.com (rproxy.gmail.com [64.233.170.201]) by mx3.redhat.com (8.12.11/8.12.11) with ESMTP id j0RBqwXY009312 for ; Thu, 27 Jan 2005 06:52:58 -0500 Received: by rproxy.gmail.com with SMTP id a41so412578rng for ; Thu, 27 Jan 2005 03:52:58 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: <3b24531c050127035217717af5@mail.gmail.com> Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2005 05:52:57 -0600 From: Myrddin Emrys Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: [linux-lvm] PE Size and Waste Reply-To: Myrddin Emrys , LVM general discussion and development List-Id: LVM general discussion and development List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , List-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: linux-lvm@redhat.com It appears that one PE can only hold a single file. Since my PE size is 16MB, that means that the files on my LVM array are... well, less than efficiently packed. What puzzles me is that this fact is never mentioned anywhere in the Howto... I see nowhere that mentions the inefficient file packing, or the need to keep PE size to the minimum necessary for more efficient storage. This leads me to wonder if perhaps my situation is anomalous... SHOULD the system hold more than one file per extant? I originally created an LVM1 array over a year ago, and formatted it with reiserfs. After mounting the array on a new computer recently (with a 2.6 kernel) I upgraded the metadata to LVM2. For the first time I investigated the seeming lack of space (the major culprit was 2.5GB of small files [manga] taking up >75GB of space). I read and re-read the available LVM documentation, but nowhere seems to discuss a limitation of one file per PE or LE. Is this a bug with reiserfs? Should I use XFS or perhaps plain ext2? Perhaps all I need to do is run a command to pack the data, or reformat reiser with a different parameter? Thank you for your assistance and insights.