You are not logged in.

#1 2015-04-12 11:33:42

soul_rebel
Member
Registered: 2012-09-06
Posts: 24

Taking advantage of Ext4 inline_data and other recent features

Hello Archers,
with Linux 3.8, Ext4 gained support, among other things, for embedding small files in the inode, thus saving space and improving performance significantly (see https://lwn.net/Articles/469805/).
I remember thinking: "I want this as soon as 3.8 kernels are common enough"...

Today I finally took some time to dig around and see if it had been turned on by default at some point or if I had to enable it. To my dismay it seems instead that nobody is using this inline_data feature yet and apparently is not even fully supported by e2fsprogs, so that I cannot turn it on. Dang, it seems nobody even speaks of it anymore!

I don't understand. Anyone has experience with the subject?
Cheers.

Offline

#2 2015-04-13 13:59:14

teateawhy
Member
From: GER
Registered: 2012-03-05
Posts: 1,138
Website

Re: Taking advantage of Ext4 inline_data and other recent features

Looks like almost no one is using it and you have to consider that there could be undiscovered bugs that lead to data corruption which outweighs any benefits you could get from this feature.

Offline

#3 2015-04-14 07:26:28

soul_rebel
Member
Registered: 2012-09-06
Posts: 24

Re: Taking advantage of Ext4 inline_data and other recent features

I understand that is not widely used and so cannot be completely trusted yet. Still, it seems like a waste to implement such a cool feature and let it rot, without a way to set it up for people that could afford to try it.

Offline

Board footer

Powered by FluxBB