Date: Sun, 29 Jun 2003 20:16:27 +0100
From: Jamie Lokier <jamie@shareable.org>
To: John Bradford <john@grabjohn.com>
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, mlmoser@comcast.net
Subject: Re: File System conversion -- ideas
Message-ID: <20030629191627.GA26258@mail.jlokier.co.uk>
References: <200306291613.h5TGDerX001001@81-2-122-30.bradfords.org.uk>
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John Bradford wrote:
> > which is awfully difficult if you have, say, a 60GB filesystem, a 60GB
> > disk, and nothing else.
> 
> Well, I don't partition all of the space on every new disk I buy
> straight away, I partition off what I think I'll need, and leave the
> rest unallocated.

I used to do something like that.  It became awfully inconvenient, so I...

> > > that the only reason to do it would be if you
> > > could do it on a read-write filesystem without unmounting it.
> >
> > IMHO even if it requires the filesystem to be unmounted, it would
> > still be useful.  More challenging to use - you'd have to boot and run
> > from ramdisk, but much more useful than not being able to convert at all.
> 
> Only if it is the root filesystem, the filesystem of which generally
> isn't going to affect overall performance that much.

...now use a single "/" filesystem on most systems, with a tiny
"/boot" one to ensure booting.  With journalling, this risk of losing
data this way is much lower than it used to be, and the old reason for
using multiple partitions - to avoid having to fsck /usr - no longer applies.

> > But useless unless you have a second disk lying around that you don't
> > use for anything but filesystem conversions.
> 
> Not at all.  You can just use unpartitioned space on your existing
> disk.

So you have as much space unpartitioned on your disks as you are
actually using to store data?  I generally don't.

-- Jamie
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