Re: File System conversion -- ideas

[rmoser <mlmoser@comcast.net>]

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 6/29/2003 at 9:37 PM Leonard Milcin Jr. wrote:

>> Nrrrg.  Yeah, I've got 80 gig and only CDR's to back up to, and no
>money.
>> A CDR may read for me the day it's written, and then not work the next
>> day.  Still a risk.
>
>Say, why you would want to change filesystem type?
>

I installed debian and it couldn't boot bk24 (kernel 2.4) at install, so I have
like 1 reiserfs partition (created afterwards,  because at the time I had
10 gig free) and the rest are ext3.  ext3 is VERY slow.  I know, it's not
THAT slow, but... I have like 5 partitions on each disk, and 2 disks.  So,
take off swap and reiserfs, like 6 at one time.  Painful.

>If you have to change filesystem type, I think it is because you have a
>good reason to do it. I can't imagine the reason explaining the need of
>converting filesystem if you use this system as home desktop. For
>ordinary user filesystem is just used for storing data and managing
>permissions to that data. These are not real-time or
>performance-critical systems. Thus most of the popular filesystems like
>ext2, ext3, reiserfs basically fit their needs. If they choose right
>filesystem type at startup, they could use it for a time of life of
>their hard disk.
>

reiserfs is the filesytem that servers should use.  It has the least latency
these days ;-) And it's quite stable.

>There are very few situations when you really need to convert
>filesystem. Most of the time this operation is done by person who have
>some experience with computers, and highly probable by person who has
>access to additional hard disks, etc. I have never heard of one who had
>to change filesystem type, and had no access to additional equipment.
>

Some of us are walking brains with very shallow pockets.

>I don't want to say it is not possible, to provide such a function
>safely. What I want to say is that kernel developers should not
>complicate filesystem code without *very* good reason. I think that
>providing on-the-fly conversion capability is not a good reason. Good
>reason is when you can improve usability for many users and most of the
>time, not when you ease one operation needed by very few users few times
>in their life, especially when they can do what they need by just
>transferring their data back and forth to another disk, or machine.
>

The filesystem code wouldn't be much more complicated.  The changes
needed for this would all be in a separate source file anyway.  Most of the
complicated crap is all in the code for the datasystem that manages the
two filesystems that suddenly exist in the same space.

>
>Regards,
>
>
>Leonard Milcin Jr.
>
>
>--
>"Unix IS user friendly... It's just selective about who its friends are."
>                                                        -- Tollef Fog Heen
>
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