Ext4 Howto

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General Information

As of this writing (mid-July, 2008, just after the release of 2.6.26), the ext4 code is functionally complete and functional enough that a few people are using it in production. However, it is still being tested and although the developers haven't lost any data yet, please be cautious and keep plenty of backups!

The ext4 developers can be contacted at the ext4 mailing list. They are sometimes also can be found on IRC.

Getting Ext4 code

For people who build their own kernel

1. Start with a 2.6.26 kernel. It is highly recommended that you apply the 2.6.26-ext4-1 patchset to get improved performance through delayed allocation as well as the latest bug fixes. In your kernel's .config file, enable EXT4DEV_FS (along with EXT4DEV_FS_XATTR and EXT4DEV_FS_POSIX_ACL if you like).

2. Compile the latest version of e2fsprogs (as of this writing 1.41.0) from kernel.org or from Sourceforge.

For people who are running Fedora

Fedora 9 currently has a kernel based on 2.6.25 that has basic ext4 support. (It is missing some of the latest fixes and performance optimizations, such as delayed allocation.) A 2.6.26 kernel update should be available reasonably soon, with more up-to-date ext4 code, though still missing delayed allocation, which should arrive in 2.6.27.

Fedora 9 has all of the basic infrastructure needed to be able to run ext4, including updated udev, blkid, and other bits needed for ext4 to be a transparently recognized filesystem.

e2fsprogs-1.41.0 is currently in the Fedora 9 updates-testing repository, and users wishing to utilize ext4 should use this version of e2fsprogs.

Creating ext4 filesystems

Creating a new ext4 filesystem is very easy once you have upgraded to e2fsprogs 1.41 or later. Simply type:

       $ mke2fs -t ext4dev /dev/DEV

Once the filesystem is created, it can be mounted as follows:

       $ mount -t ext4dev /dev/DEV /wherever

NOTE: Although very large fileystems are on ext4's feature list, current e2fsprogs currently still limits the filesystem size to 2^32 blocks (16T for a 4k block filesystem). > 16T support is one of the very next high-priority features to complete for ext4.

Converting an ext3 filesystem to ext4

To convert an existing ext3 filesystem to use ext4, use the command

$ tune2fs -O extents -E test_fs /dev/DEV

NOTE: by doing so, new files will be created in extents format, but this will not convert existing files. However, they can be transparently read from and written to in the old ext3 format.

If the filesystem was created with 128 byte inodes, it can be converted to use 256 byte for greater efficiency via:

       $ tune2fs -I 256 /dev/DEV

NOTE: Recent mkfs.ext3 now defaults to 256-byte inodes, so newer distributions (Fedora 9 included) will have already created 256-byte inode filesystems.

WARNING: Once the extent feature has been turned on, the filesystem will no longer be mountable using the ext3 filesystem!

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