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

Arjan van de Ven
2006-06-11T16:56:20Z

On Sun, 2006-06-11 at 20:30 +0400, Nikita Danilov wrote:
> Arjan van de Ven writes:
> > 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")
>
> Huh? Direct/indirect/double-indirect/... _is_ a tree, albeit not
> balanced one.

ok sure; the main strength is that it is not a dynamic tree.