On Thursday 14 February 2008, Thomas Kahle wrote: > Hi, > > my 2 cents: > | So if for example I copied everything over to a different hard > | drive and then copied everything back, it would be "defragmented" > | then? > > I think so yes, but still I would not do it as I think you will > hardly notice the difference, but there is a good chance to screw > things up.
Yes, everything will be defragmented. In addition, it will leave gaps between files. So if a file lateron grows it will not immediately fragment. > > | I would think of something like this: > | > | Boot some live CD. > | Mount old and backup drives. > | Copy old drive to a backup drive using cp -av yada yada. > > Its very important to do this as root and preserve all the file > permissions and symbolic links exactly as they are on the drive. > In particular the backup file system must support all this. > (You cannot backup to a FAT file system, etc.) > > the cp option "-b" could help, but surely you should read > man cp > and > man mount The easiest way to preserve all permissions and symlinks is to use tar instead of cp. If you do so, read "man tar" of course. > | The biggest slow down by the way is when logging into KDE the > | first time. It takes a long while and that drive is just a > | getting it. The light just stays on while loading everything up. > > I personally think this is not due to fragmentation. > On loading KDE just preloads some big libraries (it is a big > program :) and this takes some time. > Furthermore the libraries are loaded with "LD_BIND_NOW=true", which > makes the linker resolve all the symbols when KDE starts. (KDE > takes longer to load, but later the programs are loaded faster). > You can google for that to learn what it means. There are two ways to speed up KDE load time. First, prelink everything (something like "prelink -avmR"). Second, you can configure kdm to preload as much of KDE as possible. So while you are still staring at your login screen or typing your user name and password, it loads as much as it can. BTW, KDE 4 starts significantly faster than 3.5. Uwe -- Informal Linux Group Namibia: http://www.linux.org.na/ SysEx (Pty) Ltd.: http://www.SysEx.com.na/ -- gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org mailing list
