Ext3 & tune2fs tweaking question for ext3 experts
 

A basic question for the ext3 experts (I'm a 3 year reiserfs user):

Am I correct in thinking that all the tune2fs options can be run on unmounted ext3 / partitions (with a full Linux installation already existing on said partition), as long as you run e2fsck -D after tune2fs, and the result will be no data loss, or any other negative impact?

Besides my Gentoo installations / partitions that I'm presently converting from reiserfs, I have several other Linux distros installed with default ext3 / partitions that I'd like to tweak up a bit with the dir_index, journal_data, and filetype features. Also considering the commit=xxx option, but opinions really vary and contradict each other on that one.

Among many other sources I've looked at in the last few weeks, this Gentoo thread summarizes it up pretty well, but I'd still like some other opinions from another group, if possible.

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-305871.html

So far I've done one of my Gentoo installations with this info, and notice a good improvement over my reiserfs system (same / backed up and copied back to a fresh ext3 tweaked partition). I'm chalking that up to mostly getting rid of my old and fragmented reiserfs, if not the tweaked ext3 itself. The latest discussions are tending towards a consensus that reiserfs (and especially reiser4) does indeed have a fragmentation problem over time, and requires a periodic "tarball / then copy / to new partition" defrag routine.

I'm no filesystem expert but I guess that ReiserFS problem may be real. Reiser uses every space left in blocks to maximize disk usage and it optimizes performance by trying not to touch too much. The problem is that if you delete data, no defragmentation is done to make it better for many blocks to be arranged in sequential order, so the tar hack comes healthy at times. I'm no big fan of journaling filesystems anyway. They're good for databases though. I never use it on root or home partitions. I just keep with good ol' ext2

well tell me one thing its better reserfs use for squid cache machine i have 20 gb /dev/hda for root using ext3 and /dev/hdc 40 gb hdd and using ext3 for cache .. can i convert cache /dev/hdc into reserfs ..yes or no ?

i manage some isp's cache servers and i have had no problem with ext3 as the root and/or cache storage fs, and i am talking about HUGE caches. yep it might be a few msecs off compared to others since it works using fragments but nothing i have really noticed.

And common the name just looks coool :P

mmm
 

oh gr8 to see you man .. dude can you send me your squid.conf well i want to see what the cache purge and refresh_patten you using on the large caches servers .
;)

Primo,
Thanks for the feedback- I went ahead and tuned one of my existing ext3 / partitions with tune2fs, and it worked out fine- no problems, so that answers my question.

abakali- You probably know this, but if you reformat your 40GB machine to reiserfs, and it has data you want to save, it will be destroyed. So, the only way is to back the data up somewhere else, and restore it later after you change files systems.

I used this on my partitions when I first saw it using a live CD and there was a noticable improvement. Might be of some use, there wasn't any data loss.

http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?t=12865

Sure buddy i will be in house next week or so i will pm you the script ^_^

thx dude
 

send me script on my mail box
asifbakali@netech.com.pk


:Pengy: