Re: 2 ext4 queries

[Eric Sandeen <sandeen redhat com>]

Petrus de Calguarium wrote:
> 1. Is it safe to use ext4 for important data? I Do mean ext4, not ext4dev.

While ext4 is largely out of its development phase, it is still a
relatively new filesystem so you would do well (as you would with any
filesystem, to be honest) to test it in your environment before you
deploy it for real data, and keep good backups.

> 2. Will a partition formatted as ext4 need to be reformatted down the road, as ext4 matures, or will one presently formatted as ext4 house the data correctly and in accord with future enhancements to ext4?
> 

That's unlikely.  ext4 filesystems formatted today should always be
compatible with ext4 code in the future.  It is possible that newer
features will be added later which require different filesystem geometry
at mkfs time, but that situation will probably be rare.

-Eric