Re: max ext2 fs size

From: Theodore Y. Ts'o (tytso@MIT.EDU)
Date: Fri May 19 2000 - 18:22:54 EST


   Date: Fri, 19 May 2000 21:10:19 +0300
   From: Matti Aarnio <matti.aarnio@sonera.fi>

   Yes. I was fairly carefull to use generic term "blocksize",
   and then speak of one particular size (4k).

   "man mke2fs" tells us:

          -b block-size
                 Specify the size of blocks in bytes. Valid block
                 size vales are 1024, 2048 and 4096 bytes per block.
                 If omitted, mke2fs block-size is determined by the
                 file system size and the expected usage of the
                 filesystem (see the -T option).

   So yes, 8k is possible in theory, but utilities don't allow it.

The current VFS/mm/ext2 kernel code doesn't allow blocks larger than the
page size. This could be worked around, but that's why the user-mode
utilities don't allow it. It should be possible to patch out the checks
in the usermode utilities and in the kernel, and use an 8k blocksize on
an Alpha, but then you wouldn't be able to mount the filesystem on any
Linux implementation with a 4k page size. As far as I know no one has
tried doing this, though.

                                                - Ted
<

-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue May 23 2000 - 21:00:18 EST