Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2003 07:56:19 -0400 From: Bill Moran <wmoran@potentialtech.com> To: Sue Blake <sue@welearn.com.au> Cc: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Defragment HDD Message-ID: <3F23BDE3.6070101@potentialtech.com> In-Reply-To: <20030727192744.A5069@welearn.com.au> References: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0307241548210.73690-100000@lexus.isprime.com> <004501c3521d$e8532c40$3501a8c0@pro.sk> <44brvjhdl4.fsf@be-well.ilk.org> <20030727192744.A5069@welearn.com.au>
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Sue Blake wrote: > On Thu, Jul 24, 2003 at 04:30:47PM -0400, Lowell Gilbert wrote: > >>"Peter Rosa" <prosa@pro.sk> writes: >> >>>OK, but it is not the "real defragmenting" like Norton Speedisk >>>or MS Defrag on windoze machines. >>>Is there anything other ? >> >>The term doesn't typically refer to quite the same thing on Unix. No >>defragmentation program of that type is needed, due to different filesystem >>internals. See the old (but still useful) /usr/share/doc/smm/05.fastfs >>for a bit of a better introduction. > > You'd be surprised how common this defrag request is... > and how useful those old docs can be. I wouldn't ... I've hit this question a few times and use the doc to explain it. > Recently I had the head of IT and the VMS administrator standing > over me and demanding that I defrag the unix servers routinely > once a month, like the VMS guy always does and the Microsoft guy > had agreed to. They'd gone into a dramatically serious little > whisperfest before they marched over and started throwing accusations > and demands, refusing any response that sounded like "but". See ... you handled this very differently that I did. I would have just said, "I already do defragment it regularly," and shown them the output during boot that shows the low level (usually less than 1%) of block fragmentation on the disks. If they don't know what that means or how it works, well ... that's why _I'm_ the FreeBSD admin and not them. I've occasionally used the explanation, "defrag is built in, it defrags each file _as_ it's saving it." It's a little oversimplified, but not completely incorrect. You can even show them the space/time settings you can change to "control the level of defragmentation." > Oh they were quite serious, believing that Microsoft and VMS need it > therefore every filesystem does, and they wouldn't accept that it is > unnecessary for unix, no matter what I told them, nor could they > explain to me why the venerable VMS had such a lousy filesystem that > in this day and age it still falls over its feet whenever it gets > fragmented which is often. They were convinced that I just didn't > care about defragmentation or know the right tools to use, and no > amount of reason would shake that. I was, of course, unable to comply > with the manager's parting directive and said so. Hehe ... I find it humorous that when you went to the trouble to try to educate them, they refused to be educated. > While waiting for advice that the room had been booked for my pending > disciplinary interview, I emailed the abovementioned fastfs doc to the > guys concerned, offered to accept an equivalent doc for VMS, and asked > them to explain to me again what "defragging" does when they know how the > unix filesystem works. I have not heard a peep from the manager since, > and not a soul has mentioned filesystems within my earshot again :-) Obviously, I can't be sure, but I suspect that they never brought it up again because they were unable to understand the document. -- Bill Moran Potential Technologies http://www.potentialtech.com
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