is there a defrag feature in open suse 11.1?

Hi,

there's nothing like defrag in Linux. The filesystems used does work completely other way like windows filesystem does.

Short answer: no
Long answer: kinda sorta but you don't need it

Stop repeating myths.

Fragmentation is still an issue when it comes to filesystems often used with Linux, but it doesn't occur until your disk gets near full (and this isn't 100% true either - let's say you have quite a few relatively small files spread out evenly throughout the whole disk, with 1GB of space between any neighboring files. Now you download a 4+GB file (an ISO image, for example). Your system has no solution but to split that file into smaller pieces, so it can fit into the free areas on your disk.)

Its still not usually nessecary to defrag like it is with windows filesystems like ntfs and fat32

I was unaware that there was a defrag for linux. But I have yet to notice a slowdown on my OS because of it. Linux filesystems are designed 100x better than windows. OF course that may be my opinion, but I am sure others will agree.

The question is whether there is a defragmentation program, and the answer is no. Given that, it's clear that fragmentation on Linux filesystems is not viewed as an important enough issue to bother to write such a program.

Fragmentation tools exist for ext2, so you could convert ext3 back to ext2 and defrag it then and convert it back to ext3

I think the pertinent question for the OP is why do you think you need to defrag the volume?

If there is a particular reason, then there are ways to do it, but if you think you simply need to do it as a matter of course, the answer is you don't (or at least shouldn't) need to.

He didn't say there was no such thing as fragmentation, he said there's no such thing as defrag, which may or may not be the case, but is a very different statement.. I'm not aware of defrag tools, but have never looked for them, which doesn't rule their existence out.

hi and thank you all for your comments. My concern was to prevent errors in editing large 8 gigabyte video files.I found in vista and XP that defraging prevented errors. After editing gigabyte files and burning a DVD (DVD shrink to fit) I really don't appreciate errors. by the way, can anyone recommend an equivalent editing program to Sony Vegas but for Linux? These occasionally show on TV and sound editing should be included.

Let's give credit where credit is due here...

First of all, disk-drives have categorically become huge. So, disk space allocation is rarely difficult for the system to do efficiently.

Second, modern file systems ... including Windows' "ntfs" ... are designed to manage disk space much more efficiently than their predecessors could do.

Today's file systems are designed to run for months and years, with no "defragmentation" or other maintenance being necessary for any reason at any time.

Yes, that is true, even going from FAT32 to NTFS, but in all reality, you still need to defrag regularly on NTFS... I cant imagine what my windows drive would look like if I didnt defrag for years..... i let it go for a month and I can see a decrease in performance. But my linux partition (reiserfs) seems to be chugging along quite nicely, and it has been in this same computer for all of maybe a day less than windows, so about 4 years. Everything still opens instantaneously, unlike the windows side (why do I keep that around again?..... oh yeah... games...), and yes i do realize that a large majority of windows slow-down is due to the registry being.... well.... crap.

I didn't mean for that to sound like a rant, and yes I do use windows on occasion, only for gaming, but you can see over time that linux deals with file fragmentation very well over time.

I would like to compare straight accross though, does anyone know of a good app to see just how fragmented my linux partition is?

Thanks

fsck gives a % contiguous stat (or similar) as I recall.