Re: [Ext2-devel] [RFC 0/13] extents and 48bit ext3

Jeff Garzik
2006-06-09T18:52:05Z

Andreas Dilger wrote:
> On Jun 09, 2006 13:04 -0500, Matthew Frost wrote:
>> Alex Tomas wrote:
>>> sorry, I disagree. for example, NUMA isn't default and shouldn't be.
>>> but we have it in the tree and any one may choose to use it.
>> NUMA is designed to cope with a hardware feature, which not everybody
>> has. Filesystem upgrades are not qualitatively similar; it does not
>> depend on one's hardware design as to whether one uses ext3, let alone
>> extents. Your logic is faulty.
>
> If you have a > 8TB block device (which is common in large RAID devices
> today, will be a single disk in a couple of years) then it is important
> that your filesystem work with this block device.
>
> If ext2 and ext3 didn't support > 2GB files (which was a filesystem
> feature added in exactly the same way as extents are today, and nobody
> bitched about it then) then they would be relegated to the same status
> as minix and xiafs and all the other filesystems that are stuck in the
> "we can't change" or "we aren't supported" camps.

PRECISELY. So you should stop modifying a filesystem whose design is
admittedly _not_ modern!

ext3 is already essentially xiafs-on-life-support, when you consider
today's large storage systems and today's filesystem technology. Just
look at the ugly hacks needed to support expanding an ext3 filesystem
online.

Jeff