As I understand it, debian lenny's ext3 filesystem uses 256 byte inodes,
to be forward compatible with ext4.
I have a production server running debian etch. It is attached to a
fiber channel array, on which it has several ext3 filesystems. I'm
installing a new server, and I'd like to use lenny. It will be attached
to the same array, and I'd like to be able to occasionally use the ext3
filesystems created previously. Ideally, I'd also like to go the other
direction as well. Is this possible, or just crazy talk?
TIA
--
Ron Peterson
Network & Systems Manager
Mount Holyoke College
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~rpeterso
facebook: http://tinyurl.com/d63r5c
2009-03-19_14:45:02-0400 rpeterso:
> As I understand it, debian lenny's ext3 filesystem uses 256 byte inodes,
> to be forward compatible with ext4.
>
> I have a production server running debian etch. It is attached to a
> fiber channel array, on which it has several ext3 filesystems. I'm
> installing a new server, and I'd like to use lenny. It will be attached
> to the same array, and I'd like to be able to occasionally use the ext3
> filesystems created previously. Ideally, I'd also like to go the other
> direction as well. Is this possible, or just crazy talk?
If I understand what I'm reading correctly, this is a non-problem. Any
recent 2.6 kernel should understand ext3 filesystems with 256 byte
inodes just fine. The only thing that has happened is that the latest
debian stable defaults to using 256 byte inodes rather than 128. Is
that correct? Are there any gotcha's here that I should be aware of?
TIA
--
Ron Peterson
Network & Systems Manager
Mount Holyoke College
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~rpeterso
facebook: http://tinyurl.com/d63r5c
> 2009-03-19_14:45:02-0400 rpeterso:
> > As I understand it, debian lenny's ext3 filesystem uses 256 byte inodes,
> > to be forward compatible with ext4.
> >
> > I have a production server running debian etch. It is attached to a
> > fiber channel array, on which it has several ext3 filesystems. I'm
> > installing a new server, and I'd like to use lenny. It will be attached
> > to the same array, and I'd like to be able to occasionally use the ext3
> > filesystems created previously. Ideally, I'd also like to go the other
> > direction as well. Is this possible, or just crazy talk?
>
> If I understand what I'm reading correctly, this is a non-problem. Any
> recent 2.6 kernel should understand ext3 filesystems with 256 byte
> inodes just fine. The only thing that has happened is that the latest
> debian stable defaults to using 256 byte inodes rather than 128. Is
> that correct? Are there any gotcha's here that I should be aware of?
Yes. Any 2.6 kernel will understand both inode sizes. It is just a
matter of a default in mkfs. Larger inodes allow for more effective
handling of extended attributes, ACLs and such but waste more
space/throughput in case you don't use them...
Honza
--
Jan Kara <[email protected]>
SuSE CR Labs