Re: [gentoo-user] Anybody tried shake defragmenter?
On Sat, Aug 8, 2009 at 12:40 AM, meino.cra...@gmx.de wrote:
Paul Hartman paul.hartman+gen...@gmail.com [09-08-03 23:09]:
On Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 3:22 PM, Grantemailgr...@gmail.com wrote:
I know Linux systems aren't supposed to become fragmented, but I've
also read that it can happen eventually. I'm on ext3. I've read that
ext4 will have a defragmenter but that it doesn't have one yet.
It's not that they aren't supposed to become fragmented, it is that
they try to avoid it. There is a big difference, and things like
streaming writes (downloads, bittorrents, etc) can cause extreme
fragmentation.
The time-honored way of fixing this is backup, delete, restore. In
my case my simple defragmenter is to move a file to tmpfs and then
move it back to the hard drive. I always do this to files I'm about to
burn to a CD/DVD to ensure the read speed is optimal.
Has anyone tried the shake defragmenter?
Yes, nothing has blown up yet. :)
Hi,
does anyone know a source of information -- except reading the C-source
of shake itsself -- what the meaning of the different columns of
shake -pvv dir
are ?
No. :) There's no documentation really. The source cide is funny,
everything is named after law, investigations, accused, trials and
judgments. :) There best I can do is reproduce the part of the source
that shows this info and hope you can infer from the names what they
are showing:
/* Show statistics about an accused */
void
show_reg (struct accused *a, struct law *l)
{
/* Show file status */
printf (%lli\t%lli\t%lli\t%i\t%i\t%i\t%i\t%s,
a-ideal, a-start / 1024, a-end / 1024, a-fragc, a-crumbc,
(int) (a-age / 3600 / 24), a-guilty, a-name);
/* And, eventualy, list of frags and crumbs */
if (l-verbosity 2 a-poslog a-poslog[0] != -1)
{
uint n;
putchar ('\t');
for (n = 0; a-sizelog[n + 1] != -1; n++)
printf (%lli:%lli,, a-poslog[n] / 1024, a-sizelog[n] / 1024);
printf (%lli:%lli\n, a-poslog[n] / 1024, a-sizelog[n] / 1024);
}
else
putchar ('\n');
}
Re: [gentoo-user] Anybody tried shake defragmenter?
Paul Hartman wrote:
No. :) There's no documentation really. The source cide is funny,
everything is named after law, investigations, accused, trials and
judgments. :) There best I can do is reproduce the part of the source
that shows this info and hope you can infer from the names what they
are showing:
/* Show statistics about an accused */
void
show_reg (struct accused *a, struct law *l)
{
/* Show file status */
printf (%lli\t%lli\t%lli\t%i\t%i\t%i\t%i\t%s,
a-ideal, a-start / 1024, a-end / 1024, a-fragc, a-crumbc,
(int) (a-age / 3600 / 24), a-guilty, a-name);
/* And, eventualy, list of frags and crumbs */
if (l-verbosity 2 a-poslog a-poslog[0] != -1)
{
uint n;
putchar ('\t');
for (n = 0; a-sizelog[n + 1] != -1; n++)
printf (%lli:%lli,, a-poslog[n] / 1024, a-sizelog[n] / 1024);
printf (%lli:%lli\n, a-poslog[n] / 1024, a-sizelog[n] / 1024);
}
else
putchar ('\n');
}
Does this make sense to anyone? It looks like it got worse instead of
better.
r...@smoker / # /root/fragck.pl /home/
9.8476210220794% non contiguous files, 1.989530423966 average fragments.
r...@smoker / # shake --old=0 -X /home/
r...@smoker / # /root/fragck.pl /home/
14.6129132552596% non contiguous files, 1.65074100943103 average fragments.
r...@smoker / # /root/fragck.pl /usr/portage/distfiles/
24.3989314336598% non contiguous files, 9.93054318788958 average fragments.
r...@smoker / # shake --old=0 -X /usr/portage/distfiles/
r...@smoker / # /root/fragck.pl /usr/portage/distfiles/
38.646482635797% non contiguous files, 10.9777382012467 average fragments.
r...@smoker / #
Am I reading this wrong or something?
Dale
:-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] Anybody tried shake defragmenter?
Oh, and you're utilizing SMART, right? Should I be doing more than running this test: smartctl -t long /dev/sda [...] Does this indicate everything is OK as far as SMART can tell? Num Test_Description Status Remaining LifeTime(hours) LBA_of_first_error # 1 Extended offline Completed without error 00% 14109 - Looks good. Have a look at the output of 'smartctl -H /dev/sda', too. And also of 'smartctl -A /dev/sda', there you may spot things that are wearing down, but not failing imminently. The output is a little hard to interpret, though. Here's an article about smartmontools: http://www.linuxjournal.com:80/article/6983 Wonko Thank you for that. I do get this on one HDD: SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED Please note the following marginal Attributes: ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE 190 Airflow_Temperature_Cel 0x0022 066 035 045Old_age Always In_the_past 34 (Lifetime Min/Max 20/38) But based on the info here: http://forum.synology.com/enu/viewtopic.php?f=117t=9806start=15 it doesn't sound like a big deal. That HDD was previously in another system which I think had a temperature problem. - Grant
Re: [gentoo-user] Anybody tried shake defragmenter?
Grant writes: Oh, and you're utilizing SMART, right? Should I be doing more than running this test: smartctl -t long /dev/sda [...] Does this indicate everything is OK as far as SMART can tell? Num Test_DescriptionStatus Remaining LifeTime(hours) LBA_of_first_error # 1 Extended offlineCompleted without error 00% 14109 - Looks good. Have a look at the output of 'smartctl -H /dev/sda', too. And also of 'smartctl -A /dev/sda', there you may spot things that are wearing down, but not failing imminently. The output is a little hard to interpret, though. Here's an article about smartmontools: http://www.linuxjournal.com:80/article/6983 Wonko
Re: [gentoo-user] Anybody tried shake defragmenter?
I know Linux systems aren't supposed to become fragmented, but I've also read that it can happen eventually. I'm on ext3. I've read that ext4 will have a defragmenter but that it doesn't have one yet. It's not that they aren't supposed to become fragmented, it is that they try to avoid it. There is a big difference, and things like streaming writes (downloads, bittorrents, etc) can cause extreme fragmentation. The time-honored way of fixing this is backup, delete, restore. In my case my simple defragmenter is to move a file to tmpfs and then move it back to the hard drive. I always do this to files I'm about to burn to a CD/DVD to ensure the read speed is optimal. Has anyone tried the shake defragmenter? Yes, nothing has blown up yet. :) Hi, I have several encfs-encrypted partions. As fas as I had understood encfs, only the contents of the data file and not their organisational data are encrypted (?). But I may be wrong... So, do I any harm to shake those partions without mounting them in beforehand? Kind regards, Meino Cramer PS: How can I make a mount -o remount,user_xattr work? Do I have to re-mkfs the partions (please not..) ? You can use -X with shake to skip the xattr stuff. - Grant
Re: [gentoo-user] Anybody tried shake defragmenter?
Grant emailgr...@gmail.com [09-08-07 17:40]: I know Linux systems aren't supposed to become fragmented, but I've also read that it can happen eventually. I'm on ext3. I've read that ext4 will have a defragmenter but that it doesn't have one yet. It's not that they aren't supposed to become fragmented, it is that they try to avoid it. There is a big difference, and things like streaming writes (downloads, bittorrents, etc) can cause extreme fragmentation. The time-honored way of fixing this is backup, delete, restore. In my case my simple defragmenter is to move a file to tmpfs and then move it back to the hard drive. I always do this to files I'm about to burn to a CD/DVD to ensure the read speed is optimal. Has anyone tried the shake defragmenter? Yes, nothing has blown up yet. :) Hi, I have several encfs-encrypted partions. As fas as I had understood encfs, only the contents of the data file and not their organisational data are encrypted (?). But I may be wrong... So, do I any harm to shake those partions without mounting them in beforehand? Kind regards, Meino Cramer PS: How can I make a mount -o remount,user_xattr work? Do I have to re-mkfs the partions (please not..) ? You can use -X with shake to skip the xattr stuff. - Grant Hi Grant, thank you very much for your. I have several encfs-encrypted partions. As fas as I had understood encfs, only the contents of the data file and not their organisational data are encrypted (?). But I may be wrong... So, do I any harm to shake those partions without mounting them in beforehand? How can I make a mount -o remount,user_xattr work? Do I have to re-mkfs the partions (please not..) ? Thank your very much in advance for your help! Kind regards, Meino Cramer -- Please don't send me any Word- or Powerpoint-Attachments unless it's absolutely neccessary. - Send simply Text. See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html In a world without fences and walls nobody needs gates and windows.
Re: [gentoo-user] Anybody tried shake defragmenter?
It never made a sound before, but now there's a rhythmic grinding sound when miro is running, maybe because the HD is more full now. In my experience, the rate of change of hard drive access volume is inversely proportional with the drive's lifetime. The faster it gets louder, the sooner it's going to die. Time to start planning for replacement. Oh, and you're utilizing SMART, right? Should I be doing more than running this test: smartctl -t long /dev/sda ? - Grant If the host can send mail you might want to look into the option of it mailing you when problems are found. Things can go bad quickly Other than that though, no, I think you're in good shape. Does this indicate everything is OK as far as SMART can tell? Num Test_DescriptionStatus Remaining LifeTime(hours) LBA_of_first_error # 1 Extended offlineCompleted without error 00% 14109 - - Grant
Re: [gentoo-user] Anybody tried shake defragmenter?
Paul Hartman paul.hartman+gen...@gmail.com [09-08-03 23:09]: On Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 3:22 PM, Grantemailgr...@gmail.com wrote: I know Linux systems aren't supposed to become fragmented, but I've also read that it can happen eventually. I'm on ext3. I've read that ext4 will have a defragmenter but that it doesn't have one yet. It's not that they aren't supposed to become fragmented, it is that they try to avoid it. There is a big difference, and things like streaming writes (downloads, bittorrents, etc) can cause extreme fragmentation. The time-honored way of fixing this is backup, delete, restore. In my case my simple defragmenter is to move a file to tmpfs and then move it back to the hard drive. I always do this to files I'm about to burn to a CD/DVD to ensure the read speed is optimal. Has anyone tried the shake defragmenter? Yes, nothing has blown up yet. :) Hi, does anyone know a source of information -- except reading the C-source of shake itsself -- what the meaning of the different columns of shake -pvv dir are ? Thank you very much in advance for any help! Have a nice weekend! mcc -- Please don't send me any Word- or Powerpoint-Attachments unless it's absolutely neccessary. - Send simply Text. See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html In a world without fences and walls nobody needs gates and windows.
Re: [gentoo-user] Anybody tried shake defragmenter?
On Wed, 5 Aug 2009 07:42:24 -0700 Grant emailgr...@gmail.com wrote: It never made a sound before, but now there's a rhythmic grinding sound when miro is running, maybe because the HD is more full now. In my experience, the rate of change of hard drive access volume is inversely proportional with the drive's lifetime. The faster it gets louder, the sooner it's going to die. Time to start planning for replacement. Oh, and you're utilizing SMART, right? Should I be doing more than running this test: smartctl -t long /dev/sda ? - Grant If the host can send mail you might want to look into the option of it mailing you when problems are found. Things can go bad quickly Other than that though, no, I think you're in good shape.
Re: [gentoo-user] Anybody tried shake defragmenter?
Am Montag 03 August 2009 22:51:58 schrieb Thierry de Coulon: Anyway, I would not use such a full partition for / or /home. When it happend I moved /usr to another partition. Hmm, I simply extend the logical volume. Bye... Dirk signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] Anybody tried shake defragmenter?
Paul Hartman paul.hartman+gen...@gmail.com [09-08-03 23:09]: On Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 3:22 PM, Grantemailgr...@gmail.com wrote: I know Linux systems aren't supposed to become fragmented, but I've also read that it can happen eventually. I'm on ext3. I've read that ext4 will have a defragmenter but that it doesn't have one yet. It's not that they aren't supposed to become fragmented, it is that they try to avoid it. There is a big difference, and things like streaming writes (downloads, bittorrents, etc) can cause extreme fragmentation. The time-honored way of fixing this is backup, delete, restore. In my case my simple defragmenter is to move a file to tmpfs and then move it back to the hard drive. I always do this to files I'm about to burn to a CD/DVD to ensure the read speed is optimal. Has anyone tried the shake defragmenter? Yes, nothing has blown up yet. :) Hi, I have several encfs-encrypted partions. As fas as I had understood encfs, only the contents of the data file and not their organisational data are encrypted (?). But I may be wrong... So, do I any harm to shake those partions without mounting them in beforehand? Kind regards, Meino Cramer PS: How can I make a mount -o remount,user_xattr work? Do I have to re-mkfs the partions (please not..) ? -- Please don't send me any Word- or Powerpoint-Attachments unless it's absolutely neccessary. - Send simply Text. See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html In a world without fences and walls nobody needs gates and windows.
Re: [gentoo-user] Anybody tried shake defragmenter?
On Tue, 4 Aug 2009 11:26:26 -0700 Grant emailgr...@gmail.com wrote: Yeah, that's when I'm hearing the HD access I didn't hear before. I run miro and it's downloading several torrents all the time. It never made a sound before, but now there's a rhythmic grinding sound when miro is running, maybe because the HD is more full now. Could shake help with this? To find out, should I be running it on the partially downloaded torrents? Well, bittorent does not download in sequential order, so it is constantly doing random reads and writes. You may not be able to avoid the HD grinding during this kind of activity. Download to a RAM drive or SSD or something perhaps. Note that this problem can also be (easily?) solved on software level by pre-allocating files (like dd if=/dev/zero of=file). Sure, that won't make writes sequential, but that should guarantee that resulting file would be as non-fragmented as fs allows at a time of it's creation. In fact, rtorrent (and libtorrent) seem to have such a feature, prehaps other clients should have it somewhere, as well. http://libtorrent.rakshasa.no/ticket/460 Is there any tool available to show which files are being written to any any given time? iotop is great for watching the I/O rate and which process is responsible, but sometimes I wonder which files are being written. For example, miro is showing a constant 3.5Mbps write in iotop, and I only have 50kbps downloading and 30kbps uploading. I'd really like to know what is being written to. Check out sys-fs/inotify-tools (need inotify enabled in kernel). -- Mike Kazantsev // fraggod.net signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Anybody tried shake defragmenter?
On 7 Aug 2009, at 04:56, Mike Kazantsev wrote: ... Note that this problem can also be (easily?) solved on software level by pre-allocating files (like dd if=/dev/zero of=file). Sure, that won't make writes sequential, but that should guarantee that resulting file would be as non-fragmented as fs allows at a time of it's creation. In fact, rtorrent (and libtorrent) seem to have such a feature, prehaps other clients should have it somewhere, as well. http://libtorrent.rakshasa.no/ticket/460 I think this went out of fashion after BitTorrent clients became clever / advanced enough to download single files. I'm old enough to remember the days when opening a torrent would download the only the whole thing. If the torrent contained several files (mp3s, for instance), of which you wanted only one, then tough luck - the client would download random chunks of all the files until it had 100% of all of them, and the chances were that the one single file you wanted would be incomplete until the whole torrent was at least 99% finished (and there was no easy way to tell, anyway; you just had to download the whole lot). Once BitTorrent clients added the feature to select individual files for download out of the compilation, this became quite a popular use of them amongst the general public (who are not, as a rule, downloading Linux CDs) and led to complaints about all the space being wasted by preallocation in this way. I gather that many BitTorrent users may be interested in only 5% of a typical complete torrent. I don't use BitTorrent as actively as I used to, but my recollection is that NOT pre-allocating the space was a feature that was ADDED to the more sophisticated clients. Ideally it should indeed be an option, but it may not be ubiquitous. Stroller.
Re: [gentoo-user] Anybody tried shake defragmenter?
It never made a sound before, but now there's a rhythmic grinding sound when miro is running, maybe because the HD is more full now. In my experience, the rate of change of hard drive access volume is inversely proportional with the drive's lifetime. The faster it gets louder, the sooner it's going to die. Time to start planning for replacement. Oh, and you're utilizing SMART, right? Should I be doing more than running this test: smartctl -t long /dev/sda ? - Grant
Re: [gentoo-user] Anybody tried shake defragmenter?
I know Linux systems aren't supposed to become fragmented, but I've also read that it can happen eventually. I'm on ext3. I've read that ext4 will have a defragmenter but that it doesn't have one yet. It's not that they aren't supposed to become fragmented, it is that they try to avoid it. There is a big difference, and things like streaming writes (downloads, bittorrents, etc) can cause extreme fragmentation. Yeah, that's when I'm hearing the HD access I didn't hear before. I run miro and it's downloading several torrents all the time. It never made a sound before, but now there's a rhythmic grinding sound when miro is running, maybe because the HD is more full now. Could shake help with this? To find out, should I be running it on the partially downloaded torrents? Well, bittorent does not download in sequential order, so it is constantly doing random reads and writes. You may not be able to avoid the HD grinding during this kind of activity. Download to a RAM drive or SSD or something perhaps. Fragmentation definitely gets worse the nearer you are to full (which for me is always). I have seen very small files with hundreds of fragments as I live at 99% of my space used. They say a hard drive has 2 states: new and full :) It certainly wouldn't hurt to defrag the partial files, though you may want to pause your download before doing it (I don't know how much locking/blocking may occur on in-use files). Some bittorrent clients have an option to write a placeholder file; this is supposed to prevent fragmentation since it's allocating the space for the whole file immediately. Vuze is what I use, it calls this option allocate and zero new files on creation. The down-side is it could take a while to initialize if you're downloading something huge, especially if you're saving to a network or USB hard drive that's not very fast. Is there any tool available to show which files are being written to any any given time? iotop is great for watching the I/O rate and which process is responsible, but sometimes I wonder which files are being written. For example, miro is showing a constant 3.5Mbps write in iotop, and I only have 50kbps downloading and 30kbps uploading. I'd really like to know what is being written to. Here's how I'm running shake, please let me know if you would modify this to work on my noisy drive problem: shake -vX --new 0 --old 0 --bigsize 0 folder Does anyone know what these headers indicate (FRAGC and SHOCKED for example)? There is no info in man or on the homepage: IDEAL START END FRAGC CRUMBC AGE SHOCKED NAME - Grant
Re: [gentoo-user] Anybody tried shake defragmenter?
On Mon, 3 Aug 2009 16:48:06 -0700 Grant emailgr...@gmail.com wrote: It never made a sound before, but now there's a rhythmic grinding sound when miro is running, maybe because the HD is more full now. In my experience, the rate of change of hard drive access volume is inversely proportional with the drive's lifetime. The faster it gets louder, the sooner it's going to die. Time to start planning for replacement. Oh, and you're utilizing SMART, right?
Re: [gentoo-user] Anybody tried shake defragmenter?
On Mon, 2009-08-03 at 13:22 -0700, Grant wrote: My HD is getting noisier during access and I wonder if it's a fragmentation issue. Are you sure it's not a HD-about-to-die issue? -a
Re: [gentoo-user] Anybody tried shake defragmenter?
On Monday 03 August 2009, Grant wrote: # df Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/sda3960872076 754795944 157266648 83% / The partition is fairly full, probably the system has a hard time finding a spot to create an unfragmented file. I remember I read a partition should not be more than 50% used, maybe I'm wrong. Anyway, I would not use such a full partition for / or /home. When it happend I moved /usr to another partition. Thierry
Re: [gentoo-user] Anybody tried shake defragmenter?
On Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 3:22 PM, Grantemailgr...@gmail.com wrote: I know Linux systems aren't supposed to become fragmented, but I've also read that it can happen eventually. I'm on ext3. I've read that ext4 will have a defragmenter but that it doesn't have one yet. It's not that they aren't supposed to become fragmented, it is that they try to avoid it. There is a big difference, and things like streaming writes (downloads, bittorrents, etc) can cause extreme fragmentation. The time-honored way of fixing this is backup, delete, restore. In my case my simple defragmenter is to move a file to tmpfs and then move it back to the hard drive. I always do this to files I'm about to burn to a CD/DVD to ensure the read speed is optimal. Has anyone tried the shake defragmenter? Yes, nothing has blown up yet. :)
Re: [gentoo-user] Anybody tried shake defragmenter?
On Monday 03 August 2009 22:51:58 Thierry de Coulon wrote: On Monday 03 August 2009, Grant wrote: # df Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/sda3960872076 754795944 157266648 83% / The partition is fairly full, probably the system has a hard time finding a spot to create an unfragmented file. I remember I read a partition should not be more than 50% used, maybe I'm wrong. Well, that is just flat out wrong and simple logic tells you why. If it were true, you could never use more than half your disk space. So you buy a 1T disk to get 500G. Doesn't make sense right? The world is full of people who talk through holes in their arses. You seem to have read one of their missives. Anyway, I would not use such a full partition for / or /home. When it happend I moved /usr to another partition. You do want some breathing space, at least as big as the largest chunk of data the fs layer is going to move around in one operation. This of course is a highly variable amount. About 5% is a reasonable rule of thumb, modified by benchmarks you do on your own data. -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
Re: [gentoo-user] Anybody tried shake defragmenter?
On Monday 03 August 2009 23:05:02 Paul Hartman wrote: On Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 3:22 PM, Grantemailgr...@gmail.com wrote: I know Linux systems aren't supposed to become fragmented, but I've also read that it can happen eventually. I'm on ext3. I've read that ext4 will have a defragmenter but that it doesn't have one yet. It's not that they aren't supposed to become fragmented, it is that they try to avoid it. There is a big difference, and things like streaming writes (downloads, bittorrents, etc) can cause extreme fragmentation. The time-honored way of fixing this is backup, delete, restore. In my case my simple defragmenter is to move a file to tmpfs and then move it back to the hard drive. I always do this to files I'm about to burn to a CD/DVD to ensure the read speed is optimal. Until one day someone write a super-duper disk cache algorithm that delays writes safely, notices that you are putting back unmodified something you just deleted, then reverts to be deleted flag on the block pointers. meaning that nothing has changed. Lucky for us, I do not believe that such a driver has been written yet. Unlucky for us, I believe that such a driver is entirely possible. :-) -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
Re: [gentoo-user] Anybody tried shake defragmenter?
On Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 4:33 PM, Dalerdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: Paul Hartman wrote: On Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 3:22 PM, Grantemailgr...@gmail.com wrote: Has anyone tried the shake defragmenter? Yes, nothing has blown up yet. :) I used it a while back but couldn't really see a whole lot of difference. The numbers said it helped but not much else changed. I think logging into KDE was a little faster is about all. I'm with Alan on this one. It just doesn't get fragmented like windoze does. I think it really depends on the situation. For example I have a fast connection (20 megabit) so to maximize it I will often have several downloads in parallel, which causes files to be very fragmented. I have experienced a noticeable slowdown reading really fragmented files (2 or 3Mbyte/sec, when normal reads are around 45Mbyte/sec). At speeds that slow it can be slower than the burn speed of a DVD, which is not good, and it just slows everything down in gernal. Small files (less than 1 megabyte) are rarely fragmented and even when they are, it isn't going to have any significant effect on performance. I would defrag large files or files that are downloaded/appended, such as /usr/portage/distfiles and /var/log. If you're dealing with large digital camera pictures, audio or video then I would definitely defrag those files. Everything else in /usr/bin and so on are probably not fragmented to begin with since the files are are written at-once and whole when you emerge packages.
Re: [gentoo-user] Anybody tried shake defragmenter?
I know Linux systems aren't supposed to become fragmented, but I've also read that it can happen eventually. I'm on ext3. I've read that ext4 will have a defragmenter but that it doesn't have one yet. It's not that they aren't supposed to become fragmented, it is that they try to avoid it. There is a big difference, and things like streaming writes (downloads, bittorrents, etc) can cause extreme fragmentation. Yeah, that's when I'm hearing the HD access I didn't hear before. I run miro and it's downloading several torrents all the time. It never made a sound before, but now there's a rhythmic grinding sound when miro is running, maybe because the HD is more full now. Could shake help with this? To find out, should I be running it on the partially downloaded torrents? - Grant The time-honored way of fixing this is backup, delete, restore. In my case my simple defragmenter is to move a file to tmpfs and then move it back to the hard drive. I always do this to files I'm about to burn to a CD/DVD to ensure the read speed is optimal. Has anyone tried the shake defragmenter? Yes, nothing has blown up yet. :)
Re: [gentoo-user] Anybody tried shake defragmenter?
On Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 6:48 PM, Grantemailgr...@gmail.com wrote: I know Linux systems aren't supposed to become fragmented, but I've also read that it can happen eventually. I'm on ext3. I've read that ext4 will have a defragmenter but that it doesn't have one yet. It's not that they aren't supposed to become fragmented, it is that they try to avoid it. There is a big difference, and things like streaming writes (downloads, bittorrents, etc) can cause extreme fragmentation. Yeah, that's when I'm hearing the HD access I didn't hear before. I run miro and it's downloading several torrents all the time. It never made a sound before, but now there's a rhythmic grinding sound when miro is running, maybe because the HD is more full now. Could shake help with this? To find out, should I be running it on the partially downloaded torrents? Well, bittorent does not download in sequential order, so it is constantly doing random reads and writes. You may not be able to avoid the HD grinding during this kind of activity. Download to a RAM drive or SSD or something perhaps. Fragmentation definitely gets worse the nearer you are to full (which for me is always). I have seen very small files with hundreds of fragments as I live at 99% of my space used. They say a hard drive has 2 states: new and full :) It certainly wouldn't hurt to defrag the partial files, though you may want to pause your download before doing it (I don't know how much locking/blocking may occur on in-use files). Some bittorrent clients have an option to write a placeholder file; this is supposed to prevent fragmentation since it's allocating the space for the whole file immediately. Vuze is what I use, it calls this option allocate and zero new files on creation. The down-side is it could take a while to initialize if you're downloading something huge, especially if you're saving to a network or USB hard drive that's not very fast.
