ext2resize-devel

[ext2resize] Is the ext2resize project still alive?

[Petter R. <pe...@hu...>]

Is the ext2resize project still alive?  No activity on the mailing
list since my last email a month ago, and no commits to the
Sourceforge CVS since 2006-02-20 make me wonder.

Anyone know more?  I maintain the Debian package and would love to
have a working ext2prepare tool available in Debian until all ext2 and
ext3 filesystems support the resize_inode option. :)

Friendly,
-- 
Petter Reinholdtsen

Re: [ext2resize] Is the ext2resize project still alive?

[Coywolf Qi H. <qi...@fc...>]

On Sat, May 20, 2006 at 10:21:57AM +0200, Petter Reinholdtsen wrote:
> 
> Is the ext2resize project still alive?  No activity on the mailing
> list since my last email a month ago, and no commits to the
> Sourceforge CVS since 2006-02-20 make me wonder.

The last commits were made by me.  However there's some deeper design
problem which prevents me from fixing it cleanly and completely.

I think the ext2resize development is frozen now because developers are busy
with their jobs as Andreas Dilger and I am.  And ext2resize became less important
as it used to be after resize2fs from e2fsprogs was released as free software.
BTW, ext2resize consumes less memory than resize2fs.

I just saw your debian 1.1.19-6 release, so reply. Thanks for your work.

-- qiyong

> 
> Anyone know more?  I maintain the Debian package and would love to
> have a working ext2prepare tool available in Debian until all ext2 and
> ext3 filesystems support the resize_inode option. :)
> 
> Friendly,
> -- 
> Petter Reinholdtsen

Re: [ext2resize] Is the ext2resize project still alive?

[Petter R. <pe...@hu...>]

[Coywolf Qi Hunt]
> The last commits were made by me.  However there's some deeper
> design problem which prevents me from fixing it cleanly and
> completely.

Hm.  I hope someone will find time to at least commit the trivial
fixes I have submitted patches for and release a new version, to
reduce the amount of modifications I have to do the Debian package and
thus make it easier for me to maintain ext2resize in Debian.  I could
commit the trivial patches myself, but then I need to get write access
to the repository.  I'm 'pere' on sourceforge.

> I think the ext2resize development is frozen now because developers
> are busy with their jobs as Andreas Dilger and I am.  And ext2resize
> became less important as it used to be after resize2fs from
> e2fsprogs was released as free software.

Sure, ext2resize isn't very important anymore, but the ext2prepare
program is still needed (until all ext2/ext3 file systems include the
resize_inode), and because of this I spend some time on the package.
Online resize is required for Linux to become a reasonable alternative
as a large scale file server, and I want that to happen. :)

> I just saw your debian 1.1.19-6 release, so reply. Thanks for your work.

Thank you.  If only I could release a version 1.1.20-1 without any
debian specific patches, I would be truly happy. :)

Friendly,
-- 
Petter Reinholdtsen

Re: [ext2resize] Is the ext2resize project still alive?

[Andreas D. <ad...@cl...>]

On Jun 04, 2006  13:33 +0200, Petter Reinholdtsen wrote:
> Hm.  I hope someone will find time to at least commit the trivial
> fixes I have submitted patches for and release a new version, to
> reduce the amount of modifications I have to do the Debian package and
> thus make it easier for me to maintain ext2resize in Debian.  I could
> commit the trivial patches myself, but then I need to get write access
> to the repository.  I'm 'pere' on sourceforge.

You've been added as a developer, so you are free to merge in all of
the RH and Debian patches to CVS.

> > I think the ext2resize development is frozen now because developers
> > are busy with their jobs as Andreas Dilger and I am.  And ext2resize
> > became less important as it used to be after resize2fs from
> > e2fsprogs was released as free software.
> 
> Sure, ext2resize isn't very important anymore, but the ext2prepare
> program is still needed (until all ext2/ext3 file systems include the
> resize_inode), and because of this I spend some time on the package.
> Online resize is required for Linux to become a reasonable alternative
> as a large scale file server, and I want that to happen. :)

I agree.  My preference would be to modify e2fsprogs resize2fs to allow
it to prepare filesystems.  In essence the prepare step is mostly just
a filesystem resize (i.e. possibly moving the inode table and bitmaps
to allow a bigger group descriptor table), and as a last step adding the
resize inode (with e2fsck can already do).  I don't _think_ it would be
a huge amount of work, I just never have time to work on it.

> Thank you.  If only I could release a version 1.1.20-1 without any
> debian specific patches, I would be truly happy. :)

Your happiness is entirely in your hands now.  Not too often you are
given this opportunity :-).

Cheers, Andreas
--
Andreas Dilger
Principal Software Engineer
Cluster File Systems, Inc.

Re: [ext2resize] Is the ext2resize project still alive?

[Petter R. <pe...@hu...>]

[Andreas Dilger]
> You've been added as a developer, so you are free to merge in all of
> the RH and Debian patches to CVS.

Thank you.  I've commited the obvious ones from the debian package,
and prepared the source for release.  'make distcheck' now work.

The remaining ones are the byteorder and resize_inode patches, as well
as the patches disabling offline resizing (patches
01_endianess-fixes-fedora, 02_noresize-bigendian, 05_ext3newformat
and70_nofallback).  I'm not sure which of these have equivalent
patches commited already, and which should be commited as they are.
Will need to investigate more.

Any of you know more?

> I agree.  My preference would be to modify e2fsprogs resize2fs to
> allow it to prepare filesystems.  In essence the prepare step is
> mostly just a filesystem resize (i.e. possibly moving the inode
> table and bitmaps to allow a bigger group descriptor table), and as
> a last step adding the resize inode (with e2fsck can already do).  I
> don't _think_ it would be a huge amount of work, I just never have
> time to work on it.

Sounds reasonable to me, but I do not have the knowledge about ext2
and ext3 file systems to do it myself, and am unlikely to find time to
study the topic any time soon.  Would such change work with online
resizing too?  Until resize2fs is modified to do what it takes to
handle online resizing on any ext2 and ext3 file system, I believe
ext2prepare still have its place.

> Your happiness is entirely in your hands now.  Not too often you are
> given this opportunity :-).

Hehe.  :)

Friendly,
-- 
Petter Reinholdtsen

Re: [ext2resize] Is the ext2resize project still alive?

[Andreas D. <ad...@cl...>]

On Jun 10, 2006  00:09 +0200, Petter Reinholdtsen wrote:
> [Andreas Dilger]
> > You've been added as a developer, so you are free to merge in all of
> > the RH and Debian patches to CVS.
> 
> Thank you.  I've commited the obvious ones from the debian package,
> and prepared the source for release.  'make distcheck' now work.
> 
> The remaining ones are the byteorder and resize_inode patches, as well
> as the patches disabling offline resizing (patches
> 01_endianess-fixes-fedora, 02_noresize-bigendian, 05_ext3newformat
> and70_nofallback).  I'm not sure which of these have equivalent
> patches commited already, and which should be commited as they are.
> Will need to investigate more.

I'm not sure.  I agree we want the new-format resize inode change
(there was a patch for this by Takashi Sato posted to ext2-devel)
and the endianness changes, but I don't know if the latter is in
CVS yet or not.

> Sounds reasonable to me, but I do not have the knowledge about ext2
> and ext3 file systems to do it myself, and am unlikely to find time to
> study the topic any time soon.  Would such change work with online
> resizing too?  Until resize2fs is modified to do what it takes to
> handle online resizing on any ext2 and ext3 file system, I believe
> ext2prepare still have its place.

I believe the latest resize2fs can already do the ioctls necessary
to run online resizing, but it can't do the prepare step.

Cheers, Andreas
--
Andreas Dilger
Principal Software Engineer
Cluster File Systems, Inc.