Bigalloc

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(Created page with "= The Bigalloc Feature = == Description == The bigalloc feature changes ext4 to use clustered allocation, so that each bit in the ext4 block allocation bitmap addresses a power...")

Revision as of 02:46, 15 January 2013

The Bigalloc Feature

Description

The bigalloc feature changes ext4 to use clustered allocation, so that each bit in the ext4 block allocation bitmap addresses a power of two number of blocks. For example, if the file system is mainly going to be storing large files in the 4-32 megabyte range, it might make sense to set a cluster size of 1 megabyte. This means that each bit in the block allocation bitmap now addresses 256 4k blocks. This shrinks the total size of the block allocation bitmaps for a 2T file system shrinks from 64 megabytes to 256k. It also means that a block group addresses 32 gigabytes instead of 128 megabytes, also shrinking the amount of file system overhead for metadata.

Kernel Support

The bigalloc feature first appeared in the v3.2 kernel. As of this writing (in the v3.7 kernel) bigalloc still has some problems if the delayed allocation is enabled, especially if the file system is close to full.

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