Re: [Ext2-devel] [RFC 0/13] extents and 48bit ext3

From: Mike Snitzer
Date: Fri Jun 09 2006 - 17:50:55 EST


On 6/9/06, Joel Becker <Joel.Becker@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Fri, Jun 09, 2006 at 04:50:36PM -0400, Dave Jones wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 09, 2006 at 01:38:03PM -0700, Joel Becker wrote:
> > that the older code cannot read. Alex claims people just shouldn't use
> > "-o extents", but the fact is their distro will choose it for them.
>
> .. on partitions over a certain size, which couldn't be read with
> older ext3 filesystems _anyway_

Certainly that would be fine. Is that what will actually
happen? Experience says no. Even if you get it right in your distro,
not all distros will. Heck, can you promise me that your distro will
provide e2fsprogs updates to its older releases so that multiboot will
continue to work?

If the kernel were bound by all the stakeholders' ability to _always_
"do the right thing" very little innovation would be possible. These
tenuous arguments of hypothetical (ab)users are tiresome.

If the distro vendor did default to ext3+extents and it screwed your
hypothetical extents-naive user (booting a non-vendor kernel isn't
something your mom is going to do) then they strayed too far from
their Linux comfort-zone. If worst came to worst _THE UPDATED
EXT3UTILS WOULD PREVENT MOUNTING AN EXT3 FS WITH AN INCOMPATIBLE
FEATURE_. God forbid the naive-user get an error when they try
something they shouldn't.
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