From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org ([208.92.234.80] helo=lists.gentoo.org) by finch.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1S2Y0I-0001Yi-Fk for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Wed, 29 Feb 2012 01:06:50 +0000 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 31C61E0841; Wed, 29 Feb 2012 01:06:40 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mx.virtyou.com (mx.virtyou.com [178.33.32.244]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DED9DE060C for ; Wed, 29 Feb 2012 01:05:43 +0000 (UTC) Received: from weird.wonkology.org (xdsl-78-35-170-179.netcologne.de [78.35.170.179]) (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA (128/128 bits)) (Client did not present a certificate) by mx.virtyou.com (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 4B245DC04C for ; Wed, 29 Feb 2012 02:05:43 +0100 (CET) Date: Wed, 29 Feb 2012 02:05:41 +0100 From: Alex Schuster To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Freeing up disk space problem!! Message-ID: <20120229020541.405ab461@weird.wonkology.org> In-Reply-To: <20120229003235.4029cb1c@digimed.co.uk> References: <20120228140150.2b35b864@weird.wonkology.org> <20120228132712.6df1ca07@digimed.co.uk> <20120229002500.6d2ab8a9@weird.wonkology.org> <20120229003235.4029cb1c@digimed.co.uk> X-Mailer: Claws Mail 3.8.0 (GTK+ 2.24.10; x86_64-pc-linux-gnu) Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Archives-Salt: 15cbcacb-5916-4f6e-b49b-8167662883bb X-Archives-Hash: 71ab2313d12a73640d8fc0894ddc3512 Neil Bothwick writes: > On Wed, 29 Feb 2012 00:25:00 +0100, Alex Schuster wrote: > > > > > Don't reduce it to 0, the lower this value is, the more > > > > fragmentation you will get. > > > > > > Why is that? I would have expected more usable space to reduce the > > > need for fragmentation. I routinely use 0 on non-system > > > filesystems. > > > > I read this often, and to me it seems to make sense. When a file > > system is nearly full, writing a last big file will make the file > > being cluttered along all those tiny places where some free space is > > still left. And this probably already happens to some extent before > > the filesystem is completely full. > > But if you set m > 0, the filesystem will become full sooner, so > fragmentation will begin sooner (for non-root processes). Uh, really? I wouldn't think so. With m > 0, there is much space left, in large contiguous chunks, even though the user cannot use it all. But there should be no difference between writing files in terms of fragmentation. The reserved stuff acts just like a quota, at least that's what I always thought. Wonko