On 10/5/11 9:58 AM, Eric Sandeen wrote:
On 10/4/11 6:53 PM, Ric Wheeler wrote:
...
Note that ext4 has a new feature that allows inodes to be initialized in the background, so you will see much quicker mkfs.ext4 times as well :)
right; for large ext4 fs use (or testing), try
# mkfs.ext4 -E lazy_itable_init=1 /dev/blah
this will cause it to skip inode table initialization, and speed up mkfs a LOT. It'll also keep sparse test images smaller.
IMHO this should probably be made default above a certain size.
The tradeoff is that inode table initialization happens in kernelspace, post-mount - with efforts made to do it in the background, and not impact other I/O too much.
Sorry, Lukas reminds me that this should already be the default mode, with a new enough kernel and new enough e2fsprogs. Rawhide should meet those criteria.
-Eric
-Eric
ric