Hi all,
Is it possible to have a gap between the super-block and the
start of group 0's metadata? This would be REALLY useful, for:
* giving boot loaders a nice fixed place to store data.
* allowing partition resizers to align blocks, when resizing
the start of ext2 partitions. To illustrate: imagine you
have a block size of 4k. You move (i.e. grow) the start of the
partition back, say, 201k (you don't get to choose the
granularity, because of M$ partition alignment rules). Then
the first block on the old partition is now the 50.25th block
in the new one. Obviously, you can't reference block 50.25
in, say, an inode! The block would have to be moved, to say
block 50. Therefore, a resize would involve (AT LEAST) reading
in everything, and writing it back again at a different spot.
Having a gap between the superblock and the start of the rest of
the fs would allow us to keep all the blocks aligned properly,
during a resize.
Thanks!
Andrew Clausen
