You're correct. I was mistaken. I was taken in by the fact that it reports
the fragmentation level. :-)
John
----- Original Message -----
From: Randy Edwards <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: John Aldrich <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: '@MailingList: Linux-Newbie' <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, May 31, 1999 5:58 PM
Subject: Re: e2defrag (was: RE: fragmentation)
> > What you can do is boot from your "rescue" disk, mount your linux
partition
> > and then run "e2fsck" and it'll "defrag" your system... although it sort
of
> > does that automagically at boot. It checks for how badly fragmented
> > (non-contiguous) your file system is and then when Linux decides it's
too
> > badly "fragmented" (i.e. "non-contiguous") it will auto-run e2fsck and
fix
> > your file system so that it's more contiguous.
>
> Are you sure about that? e2fsck simply checks and repairs file
systems.
> e2fsck's man page doesn't say a thing about defragging.
>
> The running of e2fsck at boot is set by a flag which can be
specifically
> set using the tune2fs utility. This flag simply invokes e2fsck to check
the
> partition after X number of mounts just to ensure the file system is in
> order.
>
> Regarding defragmentation, I was under the impression (warning: this
> could be wrong!) that like file systems such as OS/2's HPFS, ext2 file
> systems simply use a bit of logic when writing out files and thus avoids
> most fragmentation problems. This contrasts to Microsoft's FAT file
system
> which starts writing a file at the first byte of open disk space whether
> that space is large enough for the file or not.
>
> There exists an ext2 defrag utility, it's packaged for the Debian
> GNU/Linux distribution, but most people opt to not use the utility as it
is
> largely unneeded and can cause some problems.
>
> --
> Regards, | Debian GNU/Linux - http://www.debian.org - More software than
> . | *any* distribution, rock solid reliability, quality control,
> Randy | seamless upgrades via ftp or CD-ROM, strict filesystem layout
> | and adherence to standards, and militantly 100% FREE Linux!
>
