Is there anyway to defrag Linux? I'm using Suse 10.1. I've heard there is no need to but my hard drive is really thrashing around and it's causing preformance issues.

First, do an fsck (make sure it’s mounted read-only or not mounted at all) on your drive to see the number of non-contiguous blocks.

Not a Linux pro, can you explain to me out to mount a partition as read only?

actually Linux filesystems do not need to be "Defragged" that is just a tool to compensate for a weakness in MS-Windows filesystems...

"I've heard there is no need to but my hard drive is really thrashing around and it's causing preformance issues."

Are you accessing a FAT/FAT32 filesystem? Are you sure it's not a problem with swapping?

I too think this is something other than a fragmentation problem (we’re assuming this is ext2 or ext3, right?), but there’s no need not to look and see…
The easiest (and safest) way to do this would actually be from a livecd (where you don’t need the filesystem mounted at all). From, e.g., knoppix, go to a root terminal make sure your host’s normal filesystems (e.g., /dev/hda1, etc.) are not mounted. Then, type in “e2fsck -nf /dev/hda1” (replace hda1 with one of your partitions). Repeat for all the partitions you use. At the end of the report, it gives you something that looks like this (taken from one of my boxen):
The part I emboldened tells you how much “fragmentation” exists. I would wager this is small and you are having problems for some other reason.

P.S., the instructions will be slightly different to determine fragmentation if you are using jfs, xfs, reiserfs, etc.

Yeah, that was my next question I'm using xfs. Is it just xfs instead of ef2s?

XFS filesystems have a special tool called for “filesystem reorganizer” or “xfs_fsr” to do “defragmentation” (see man 8 xfs_fsr).

P.S., it would have made this thread a lot shorter, if you said what filesystem you were using in the first place.

Sorry, didn't even think of file system type until it was mentioned.
Can't find any reference to xfs_fsr in man or man 8.
Updated man and still nothing.
Updated xfs and that got it. I'll give that a try.
It looks like by reading the man page, that xfs runs on mounted directories.

Tried it and it looks like it's running.

Thanks for the help.

Originally Posted by osor
I too think this is something other than a fragmentation problem (we’re assuming this is ext2 or ext3, right?), but there’s no need not to look and see…
The easiest (and safest) way to do this would actually be from a livecd (where you don’t need the filesystem mounted at all). From, e.g., knoppix, go to a root terminal make sure your host’s normal filesystems (e.g., /dev/hda1, etc.) are not mounted. Then, type in “e2fsck -nf /dev/hda1” (replace hda1 with one of your partitions). Repeat for all the partitions you use. At the end of the report, it gives you something that looks like this (taken from one of my boxen):
Code:

/dev/hda7: 117579/2101152 files (0.4% non-contiguous), 642971/4194965 blocks

The part I emboldened tells you how much “fragmentation” exists. I would wager this is small and you are having problems for some other reason.

P.S., the instructions will be slightly different to determine fragmentation if you are using jfs, xfs, reiserfs, etc.

Actually, my home dir is horribly fragged. one file had 28083 extents prior to defrag and 6 after. Guess I should do some maintenance once in a while!

But did it fix your problem?

Yup, sure did!

Thanks for the help.