Just to let you know, I've updated the online-ext2 kernel patch to work
with 2.2.10, and it also applies cleanly to 2.3.9.  I have tested resize
from a starting filesystem of 2MB up to 64MB without any problems, but it
should go to 256MB as well (once I install my new(old) 1GB disk for testing).

For those of you who haven't heard of it before, online-ext2 allows you to
safely grow a MOUNTED ext2 filesystem as long as the underlying parition
can be resized (LVM or MD or hardware RAID).  It should also be relatively
easy to also allow online shrinking of a filesystem if the groups at the
end of the partition are empty.

I have been using "dd" to copy new data structs into the "expanded" parts
of the disk, but the user-space tool to do this is in progress.  Now that
I have a big enough disk, I will be able to test resize past 256MB, after
which there are no other "hurdles" to cross.

You can get the latest patches and read more about it at:
http://www-mddsp.enel.ucalgary.ca/People/adilger/online-ext2/

Please give it a test.  Until the user-space tools are complete, you can
test resizes up to 8MB for 1k blocks, or up to 128MB if you make the
original filesystem with 4k blocks, which is faster for large disks anyways.

For example, you could do:
%mke2fs -b 4096 /dev/hda1 2048           # create a new 8MB filesystem
%mount /dev/hda1 /mnt                    # mount it
%cd /mnt; df -k .                        # check the size
%ncftp ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/linux-2.3.9.tar.gz &
# oops, 2.3 kernel is bigger than 8MB, resize before we fill filesystem
%mount -o remount,resize=32769 /dev/hda1 # make it 128MB in size while in use
%df -k .                                 # now we have lots of space

Cheers, Andreas
-- 
Andreas Dilger   University of Calgary  \"If a man ate a pound of pasta and
                 Micronet Research Group \ a pound of antipasto, would they
Dept of Electrical & Computer Engineering \   cancel out, leaving him still
http://www-mddsp.enel.ucalgary.ca/People/adilger/       hungry?" -- Dogbert

Reply via email to