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

Arjan van de Ven
2006-06-11T16:02:27Z

On Fri, 2006-06-09 at 14:51 -0400, Jeff Garzik wrote:
> 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.

actually I think I disagree with you. One thing I've noticed over the
years is that ext2 layout has one thing going for it: it is simple and
robust. Maybe "ext2 layout" is the wrong word, "block bitmap and
direct/indirect block based" may be better. It seems that once you go
into tree space (and I would call htree a borderline thing there) you
get both really complex code and fragile behavior all over (mostly in
terms of "when something goes wrong")