Re: atomicity

Alan Cox (alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk)
Sun, 6 Dec 1998 16:42:09 +0000 (GMT)

> open target file for writing
> while target file not fully written
> write until error
> delete one of the small files at random
> close target file
> delete all of the small random files that remain
>
> Are there any file systems around that will manage to resist fragmentation
> if subjected to that?

ext2fs will quite happily handle that situation (in fact its not an atypical
pattern of I/O on a big multiuser box - consider someone doing a download
as another user does an rm -r.

ext2fs tries to grab linear chunks of disk and divides the disk into cylinder
groups to also help to maintain locality. The BSD ffs papers [McKusik et al]
describe this sort of stuff well.

Alan

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