From owner-freebsd-questions Tue Oct 17 7:56: 6 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from siafu.iconnect.co.ke (upagraha.iconnect.co.ke [209.198.248.2]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A034337B4D7 for ; Tue, 17 Oct 2000 07:55:57 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [212.22.163.2] (helo=poeza.iconnect.co.ke) by siafu.iconnect.co.ke with esmtp (Exim 2.12 #1) id 13lY8b-00095m-00 for freebsd-questions@freebsd.org; Tue, 17 Oct 2000 17:54:45 +0300 Received: from wash by poeza.iconnect.co.ke with local (Exim 3.16 #1) id 13lYAk-000Nje-00 for freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG; Tue, 17 Oct 2000 17:56:58 +0300 Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2000 17:56:58 +0300 From: Odhiambo Washington To: FBSD-Q Subject: Re: Defragmentation Message-ID: <20001017175658.E89971@poeza.iconnect.co.ke> Mail-Followup-To: Odhiambo Washington , FBSD-Q References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: ; from "Micke Josefsson" on Tue, Oct 17, 2000 at 04:19:46PM +0200 X-Operating-System: FreeBSD poeza.iconnect.co.ke 3.5-STABLE FreeBSD 3.5-STABLE X-Mailer: Mutt http://www.mutt.org/ X-URL: web.iconnect.co.ke/users/wash X-Accept-Language: en X-Editor: Pico http://www.washington.edu/ X-Location: Mombasa, KE, East Africa X-Uptime: 5:47PM up 8 days, 20:35, 2 users, load averages: 0.00, 0.01, 0.00 Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG * Micke Josefsson [20001017 17:21]: => =>On 17-Oct-00 Daniel Bye wrote: =>> As far as I know, there are no defragmentation agents for FreeBSD (or most =>> other *NICES). Therefore, you would have to rebuild your file systems. =>> Take a tape backup of the entire system (this is sequential, so disk =>> fragmentation is not an issue), rebuild your disk slice/partition setup, and =>> then restore the backed up file systems from the tape. Now that is where the dilemna is..my box has no tape drive! But I have a tape of 10GB and there is another FBSD box near me which has the tape drive. I've heard about amanda and some network backup applications but I think I may be able to backup but not restore....what is the procedure when the tape drive is not on the box?? => => =>ffs tries to minimise fragmentation when writing files so simply *copying* files =>around should reallocate them with less framentation (then delete the original =>of course:). Moving files is not the same, as the actual inodes must be moved =>around for the system to get a chance of optimizing it. => =>How many percent fragmentation is there? I have never seen more than a couple of =>percents worth. If the file system is full ffs will have a harder time doing a =>good job, in which case perhaps using tunefs to set size optimization is a good =>thing? It's now at 2.3% but for a long time I've been watching it come this far... =>> However, you shouldn't need to do this as often as under MS systems, as the =>> various UNIX file systems aggressively try to minimise data fragmentation. I get the point. Thank you. =>> =>> If anyone knows of a defragmentation agent, I'd like to know :o) =>> Some Linux guy said Linux does it automatically ??? Heard anything like that? I've never used Linux though, except as a dumb user..just telnet, mail.. => =>Never heard of it either. I don't think it is necessary. Any idea how I can capture the msgs about the file systems when system boots, including when it's starting the daemons..? Thanking you guys BIG! -Wash -- Odhiambo Washington Inter-Connect Ltd., wash@iconnect.co.ke 5th Flr Furaha Plaza Tel: 254 11 222604 Nkrumah Rd., Fax: 254 11 222636 PO Box 83613 MOMBASA, KENYA. Just as a flower which seems beautiful and has color but no perfume, so are the fruitless words of the man who speaks them but does them not. -Dhammapada To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message