From: Ron Yorston Subject: Re: Feature request: e2fsck -z Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2011 08:54:53 +0100 Message-ID: <201108100754.p7A7ss3n016775@tiffany.internal.tigress.co.uk> References: <4E4173D4.9010104@zytor.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: linux-ext4@vger.kernel.org, hpa@zytor.com Return-path: Received: from mail.tigress.co.uk ([195.172.168.163]:33919 "EHLO intgat.tigress.co.uk" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750949Ab1HJIQQ (ORCPT ); Wed, 10 Aug 2011 04:16:16 -0400 In-Reply-To: <4E4173D4.9010104@zytor.com> Sender: linux-ext4-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: "H. Peter Anvin" wrote: >It would be a very nice thing to have a flag to e2fsck, presumably -z, >to zero out any unused data blocks, inodes and so on. The goal is to >minimize the amount of space required after compressing a virtual disk >image or similar, and to make sure any non-data isn't lying around. I wrote a separate utility, zerofree[1], that zeroes out free blocks. Ron -- [1] http://intgat.tigress.co.uk/rmy/uml/