Re: defrag

[Dietmar Schultz <dietmar@bibo.lanobis.de>]

On Tue, 27 Apr 1999, Micha Feigin wrote:

> How do i go about running defrag on the system.

pre1st: Read this and decide if you realy want to do so,
1st: Make a backup,
2nd: Make shure the filesystem isn't mounted,
3rd: Start e2defrag /dev/???	 # ??? = hda2, sdb4 etc...

> I get either an answear that it can't run on a mounted filsystem or

You either have to go into single-user-mode or start it from a
rescue-disk. Might be necessary if something still uses some files in
/usr or /var or you try to defrag the root-filesystem. You have to build a
recent boot-disk if you defrag the root-filesystem, cause lilo won't find
the kernel image after this. Then, if Linux is up, execute lilo.

> that it can't work on the disk.

This partition is to large or your memory is to low. Or both. Or it's
nearly full.

But don't bother, normaly you don't want to defrag a ext2-filesystem. It
takes care by itself to avoid fragmentation. 1-2% fragmentation is an
usual value and indeed wanted. The partition should have 1/4 left free, if
it gets too crowdy fragmentation goes up. Instead of using e2defrag, you
should get a bigger harddisk then.

Tschau, Dietmar