Talk:Ext3

message: The article says under "Disadvantages" that "many of the on-disk structures are similar to those of ext2. Because of that, ext3 lacks a number of features of more recent designs, such as dynamic allocation of i-nodes, variable block sizes". The Ext2 article on the other hand claims that "ext2 ... has variable length block size". Either there is a contraditcion or poor use of words.
xerces8
--86.61.44.206 21:14, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Variable block size 

message: Further is the htree based directory indexing a new feature in ext3? It seems to be available in ext2 as well. Should it be introduced in the section on ext3's features over its predecessor? Once again do let me know what you'll think. --Veliath 06:37, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: ext2 doesn't support the htree opton. --NJM 01:56, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: So is ext3 the name for an updated ext2 with a new version number or simply an ext2 file-system with a journal? I ask because an ext2 file-system can be created without a journal and using directory indices. --Veliath 18:33, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: ext3 is the updated filesystem (and site of all new development). My understanding is that ext2 only gets new stuff when an ext3 filesystem would become unintelligible or when there's very little complexity involved. So, the htree option wasn't added to ext2 because it's transparently backward compatible (htree unaware drivers just ignore the tree block and do an ordinary linear search through the directory) and the implementation itself was somewhat complex. (On the otherhand, things like xattr (with the accompanying SELinux labels and ACL support) were added because they weren't very difficult to implement and not including them would render the fs unreadable by ext2 (or else readable but potentially insecure)). --NJM 02:57, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The file src/linux/Documentation/filesystems/ext3.txt has a line in the intro that reads "ext3 is ext2 filesystem enhanced with journalling capabilities". It goes on to describe only journaling - hence my query. --Veliath 15:17, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  ext2 and ext3 definitions 

message: I removed the list of distros using ext3 because I thought it was getting too long and was largely useless. There are literally hundreds of Linux disributions, many or most of which that use ext3 by default and listing all of them would be a waste of space and mostly irrelevant to the article (The fact that ext3 is primarily used by Linux / used by most Linux distros is more important than the actual list itself). Pruning the list down to a limited selection of distros would only lead to an argument over which distros should be listed, so removing the list entirely was the better choice. --NJM 17:43, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  List of distros using ext3 

message: What is ext3 dir-index about and shouldn't it be mentioned in the Ext3 article?--Hhielscher 20:11, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  ext3 dirindex 

message: There is a tool which can be used for ext3, "shake" :
* http://vleu.net/shake/
* http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-463204-postdays-0-postorder-asc-start-0.html
Scullder 19:51, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Defragmentation 

message: Most people want to know the maximum file size of THEIR ext3 file system. 
In order to do this, they must determine the block size of THEIR file system.
Currently, this entry provides a table that tells the max file size for various block sizes, but it offers little direction for people to determine THEIR ext3's maximum file size.
I wrote an article that tells people how to determine their block size in Linux:
http://www.howtoadvice.com/Ext3Max/
Many people will find this link very helpful. Please consider it for linkage.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.0.204.89 (talk) 00:10, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Maximum File Size 

message: The table currently in the article contradicts  which says:
:Ext3 can support files up to 1TB. With a 2.4 kernel the filesystem size is limited by the maximal block device size, which is 2TB. In 2.6 the maximum (32-bit CPU) limit is of block devices is 16TB, but ext3 supports only up to 4TB.
Can anyone determine what the truth is?  The source which is referenced in the article now is much older than the FAQ, and is from the era before ext3 was available for Linux 2.4 kernels. -- Beland (talk) 18:18, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Your article is outdated. Probably wikipedia should specify that 4K is by far the most common blocksize for PCs, and its limits are 16T for filesystems, and 2T for files. That's what most people care about, anyway.86.120.236.174 (talk)  —Preceding comment was added at 06:20, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  Well, there are people who use 8k, 16k, and even larger filesystems.  These only work on architectures such as the Itanium, Power PC, etc., where the page size is greater than 4k.  (The block size must be less than or equal to the page size.)   So this isn't common, but table in the filesystem does list the maximum filesystem size based on block size, which is a correct thing to do.  I have received bug reports in e2fsprogs saying that things don't quite work right if you try to use a block size of 64k and you have an empty directory block, so there are people experimenting with block sizes up to 64k.Ted (talk) 15:30, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Maximum size stats 

message: I've just been discussion ext3 limitations on IRC. Of particular interest is the following line in note #1:
The max number of subdirectories in one directory is fixed to 32000.
This is not entirely correct. The maximum number of hardlinks per inode is fixed at 32000. Every directory in the filesystem has one hardlink consumed for:
* the '.' special directory and 
* the parent directory's link (if not /) and
* lost+found's '..' link (if the root of the mountable filesystem)
Thus, the maximum number of subdirectories you can have in any one directory varies between 31998 and 31997.
- Man in shack (talk) 13:32, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Subdirectory limit 

message: Hi
I noticed someone keeps adding that ext3 is more resistent to fragmentation than NTFS. Is this a myth or fact? I dont think we will ever know unless Microsoft releases the source code for NTFS.--Thunderpenguin (talk) 14:49, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: It is wishful thinking. People do not realize that ext3 fragments because the tools for checking this are not popular, and the topic is kind of taboo and religious. My recent experience is that ext3 fragments quite a bit, and the tools to see this are actually very simple; I already mentioned them above. As far as NTFS is concerned, fragmentation can be evaluated very easily too, because reading NTFS is something people have been doing for 10 years now. Theoretically the same Linux tools should work for both filesystems, but strangely do not (IIRC). Also, please note that disk space allocation policy is largely a matter of software, so it is quite possible that the Linux NTFS filesystem implementation fragments differently than MS implementation. All this is irrelevant anyway, because Wikipedia should be based on reliable sources, and not on private research. And this competitive and performance-related topic is sensitive too, so many sources will be naturally biased. Adam Mirowski (talk) 00:44, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ext3 fragmentation VS Ntfs fragmentation 

message: There's that strange comment about ext3 not supporting extents.  My understanding was that it was called the extended filesystem because it did support extents.  So, marking as citation required.
Mugwumpjism (talk) 21:54, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Extents?

message: What does ext3 use? Htrees or Hashed Btrees? Someone changed it to Hashed Btrees.--Thunderpenguin (talk) 02:37, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Htree Widefox (talk) 07:28, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Trees 

message: The article confuses the terms KiB/kB, MiB/MB, GiB/GB and TiB/TB.  Without delving into extensive research, I don't know what the past editors actually meant to say, if, indeed, they knew the difference between these pairs of terms.  Accordingly, I've tagged the "Size limits" section for cleanup. —QuicksilverT @ 02:26, 11 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: What makes you think that they're confused? All the limits are powers of two, therefore using SI prefixes is accurate. -- intgr [talk] 17:00, 11 December 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cleanup needed - Size limits 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Hello, I found that it was necessary to move the "References" heading underneath the "External links" because the reference named ":1" was giving an error: "invoked but never defined" due to its replication in one of the external link items. Hope this is not too confusing or out-of-the-ordinary. 2600:8800:1880:188:5604:A6FF:FE38:4B26 (talk) 09:58, 25 November 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: The error was caused by a stray ref tag, which I've removed. External links generally do not have references. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 10:53, 25 November 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Sounds good! Thanks. 2600:8800:1880:188:5604:A6FF:FE38:4B26 (talk) 10:59, 25 November 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Heading order