Bug#386967: O: convertfs -- in-place filesystem conversion
Package: wnpp
Severity: normal
I intend to orphan the convertfs package.
The package description is:
This simple toolset allows you to change type of file system in the lack of
backup space. You can convert from virtually any filesystem type to virtually
any one as long as they are both block-oriented and supported by Linux for
read/write, and as long as primary filesystem supports sparse files.
This is a very nice tool, however it has a few problems that I don't
have time to fix that make it unsuitable for a Debian release:
- When an error happens during conversion, there is a change that you
lose a lot of data. This is a fault in the convertfs script in some
cases, but there are also some situations where low-level disk errors
don't get propagated to the top filesystem.
- The final step in converting a filesystem, reordering the blocks of
the target filesystem, is apparently programmed in a very inefficient
way, and it can take weeks for large filesystems to complete
convertfs.
If you want to adopt this package, you need to do some extensive testing
and hacking in the code. If noone steps up in a month, I'll ask for its
removal.
-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
APT prefers unstable
APT policy: (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.17.11
Locale: LANG=, LC_CTYPE= (charmap=ANSI_X3.4-1968)
Reply to: