technicaly its half true.

Modern Linux filesystem(s) keep fragmentation at a minimum by keeping all blocks in a file close together, even if they can't be stored in consecutive sectors. Some filesystems, like ext3, effectively allocate the free block that is nearest to other blocks in a file. Therefore it is not necessary to worry about fragmentation in a Linux system."

While ext3 is more resistant to file fragmentation than the FAT filesystem, ext3 can get fragmented over time or for specific usage patterns, like slowly writing large files. Consequently, ext4 (the successor to ext3) has an online filesystem defragmentation utility e4defrag and currently supports extents (contiguous file regions).



On Sat, Aug 16, 2014 at 11:48 AM, Michael Havens <bmike1@gmail.com> wrote:
I have been taught that a Linux file system doesn't fragment. HOwever I'm was looking at Linux from scratch (section 6.25.2) and have discovered that isn't true. A couple of the programs the e2fsprogs installs are:

e2freefrag

Reports free space fragmentation information



and




e4defrag

Online defragmenter for ext4 filesystems

Well..... maybe I learned it doesn't need to be defragmented. However, e4defrag seems to indicate it does need to be defragged. Could I get some comments?

 :-)~MIKE~(-:

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