call for brave ext4 testers in F9, with caveats

[Eric Sandeen]

Ralf Ertzinger wrote:
> Hi.
> 
> On Thu, 07 Feb 2008 08:43:33 -0600, Eric Sandeen wrote:
> 
>> I suppose anything you can do to stress it; maybe run it with not much
>> memory, lots of memory pressure... just do daily things, as well.
> 
> A somewhat unrelated question: is there an API planned for ext4 that would
> allow a userspace program to reorder files on the partition? For example,
> in order to put files needed during startup close together.

There is a defrag interface planned which is fairly flexible this way.
It's still getting fleshed out, but the ability to control placement was
part of the original plan, yes.

It may not be as flexible as it could be; I think the current
implementation is something like:

o Put multiple files closer together.
  # e4defrag -r directory-name
o Defrag for free space fragmentation.
  # e4defrag -f file-name
o Defrag for a single file.
  # e4defrag file-name
o Defrag for all files on ext4.
  # e4defrag device-name

Defrag is one of the things that we're letting slip a bit as we get the
core functionality together, first.

-Eric