Messages in this thread | | | Date | Sun, 29 Jun 2003 14:26:04 -0400 | From | rmoser <> | Subject | Re: File System conversion -- ideas |
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On 6/29/2003 at 11:11 AM John Bradford wrote:
>> Anyhow, I'm thinking still about when reiser4 comes out. I want to >> convert to it from reiser3.6. It came to my attention that a user-space >> tool to convert between filesystems is NOT the best way to deal with >> this. Seriously, you'd think it would be, right? Wrong, IMHO. >> >> You have the filesystem code for every filesystem Linux supports. It's >> there, in the kernel. So why maintain a kludgy userspace tool that has >> to be rewritten to understand them all? I have a better idea. >> >> How about a kernel syscall? It's possible to do this on a running >> filesystem but it's far too difficult for a start, so let's start with >> unmounted filesystems mmkay? > >Apart from the special case of converting from one major version of a >filesystem to another major version of the same filesystem, I think >the performance of an on-the-fly filesystem conversion utility is >going to be so much worse than just creating a new partition and >copying the data across, that the only reason to do it would be if you >could do it on a read-write filesystem without unmounting it. >
You've entirely missed the point :/ Did you read the last section? I noted that the "make new partition and copy" method requires, first off, space for a new partition. All my partitions have massive amount of data on them. I can't do that. Those of us that can have to either do it twice, or rewrite fstab.
Eventually I'm hoping it can be done on a read-write filesystem. It's possible; I've thought about how to defragment read-write datasystems without getting in the way of logical operations.
>What I'd like to see is union mounts which allowed you to mount a new >filesystem of a different type over the original one, and have all new >writes go to the new fileystem. I.E. as files were modified, they >would be re-written to the new FS. That would be one way of avoiding >the performance hit on a busy server. >
mmmm, then you'd need both fs' though. That's not conversion ;-)
>John. >- >To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in >the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org >More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html >Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
--Bluefox Icy
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