pyfragtools: Defragmenter for Linux

[chris_ds]

First of all hello world (first post). =)

So jdong what defrag tool shall we use now?
"Shake" or yours?

Well, anyway, I wans't able to compile shake on my system, so I tried pydefrag ^^

It was pretty fast, but please find the time to rename it, so apt won't try to update it with the defrag tool in the repo.

A feature I would like to see in it (well I know you did not write it for that reason) is the ability to defrag free space etc.

By the way I try to say:
I really like this program. =D>

[jdong]

First of all hello world (first post). =)

So jdong what defrag tool shall we use now?
"Shake" or yours?

I still recommend pyfragtools over shake for the sake of safety.

It was pretty fast, but please find the time to rename it, so apt won't try to
update it with the defrag tool in the repo.

When I find time I'd like to submit it to the Ubuntu repositories as pyfragtools.

A feature I would like to see in it (well I know you did not write it for that reason) is the ability to defrag free space etc.

I've already explained why that wasn't implemented -- safety. To defrag free space one must understand the filesystem and manipulate it at a low-level.

That is not what pyfragtools does, and to make it do that would be to make it a totally different program.

e2defrag, however, does do this, but at a safety loss. Backport the version from Feisty (with prevu) and it'll be able to defrag ext3 properly. However, do not lose power while using e2defrag. Trust me . Trust me.

Does e2defrag make things any faster?

I tried it on my test ubuntu setup, and just like on my laptop with pyfragtools -- I cannot make a noticeable performance boost. Linux doesn't need defragging the way that Windows does.

[chris_ds]

OK safety is a very important detail of a system tool. I will use pydefrag.

I forgot to mention that I use pydefrag for windows formatted volumes (fat32 and ntfs).

I'm happy with ubuntu and it's my main system for 23 hours a day, but when it comes to gaming I have no (real) choice. And as I often transfer files between the two systems at very low free space sometimes, there's a lot of fragmentation.

I don't want to switch to win"experience" and let it run for 3 hours, just for defragmentation, because of my sensitive feeling of safety ^^.

OO's software is no alternative, because I like open source and cannot spend money on something like that at the moment.

[Frak]

OK safety is a very important detail of a system tool. I will use pydefrag.

I forgot to mention that I use pydefrag for windows formatted volumes (fat32 and ntfs).

I'm happy with ubuntu and it's my main system for 23 hours a day, but when it comes to gaming I have no (real) choice. And as I often transfer files between the two systems at very low free space sometimes, there's a lot of fragmentation.

I don't want to switch to win"experience" and let it run for 3 hours, just for defragmentation, because of my sensitive feeling of safety ^^.

OO's software is no alternative, because I like open source and cannot spend money on something like that at the moment.

I'm sorry for being off topic, but did you try Abiword? Its much more like MS Office than OO is.

And great job Jdong, I used it and loved it, keep on keepin' on.

[jdong]

I have never tested pyfragtools with ntfs-3g. I have no idea if that works or not, but I'd love to know

At worst it will fail and refuse to defrag -- pyfragtools only removes the fragmented original file when it's sure the new file is the same as the old one and less fragmented.


And OpenOffice is large and relatively slow -- abiword and gnumeric are lighter alternatives if you don't need all the features of abiword.

The speed of openoffice will improve quite a bit in Feisty due to the new dt_gnu_hash link style.

Also, you can try prelinking your system (search howto's) to gain similar speedups.

[reacocard]

Just tried this, works like a charm. I've added a package for it to my repository. To use it, add these lines to your sources.list:

deb http://download.tuxfamily.org/syzygy42 edgy reacocard
deb-src http://download.tuxfamily.org/syzygy42 edgy reacocard

then do

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install pyfragtools

[chris_ds]

Cool can't wait for feisty (or more RAM) ^^ tried abiword as well, but I really miss some features. Only use it for plain text.

And now back to topic:
Py' works very well with fat32! ...But I'm scared to test it on my ntfs volume, because I don't have enough free space to make backups.

Hope someone else can test it soon.

(By the way i actally meant "O & O Defrag" a windows tool for deragmentation)

[mooter]

I added those 2 to the repo list but it needs a pub key. Thank you nonetheless.

[reacocard]

I added those 2 to the repo list but it needs a pub key. Thank you nonetheless.

Oops, forgot that. To get the key, type this in a terminal.

wget http://download.tuxfamily.org/syzygy42/8434D43A.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add -

[chris_ds]

OK, I tested pyfrag on my ntfs volume with the ntfs-3g driver.

Well it's not working. While analysing it spammed my Konsole with something like "FIBMAP" error or so... (sorry I forgot to write it down, and I'm too old to remember )

After a while it said "Volume is not fragmented" but I think the analysis went wrong.


I think I need to test "Shake" on ntfs, too. But I get compile errors:

/shake-0.29$ make
gcc -std=gnu99 -D_LARGEFILE64_SOURCE -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64 -D_XOPEN_SOURCE=600 -O2 -D_POSIX_C_SOURCE=200112L -Wall -pedantic-errors  -Wcast-align -Wpointer-arith -Wbad-function-cast -DVERSION=\"0.29\" -DNDEBUG -c executive.c -o executive.o
gcc -std=gnu99 -D_LARGEFILE64_SOURCE -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64 -D_XOPEN_SOURCE=600 -O2 -D_POSIX_C_SOURCE=200112L -Wall -pedantic-errors  -Wcast-align -Wpointer-arith -Wbad-function-cast -DVERSION=\"0.29\" -DNDEBUG -c judge.c -o judge.o
gcc -std=gnu99 -D_LARGEFILE64_SOURCE -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64 -D_XOPEN_SOURCE=600 -O2 -D_POSIX_C_SOURCE=200112L -Wall -pedantic-errors  -Wcast-align -Wpointer-arith -Wbad-function-cast -DVERSION=\"0.29\" -DNDEBUG -c linux.c -o linux.o
linux.c:23:43: error: attr/attributes.h: No such file or directory
linux.c: In function ‘set_ptime’:
linux.c:42: warning: implicit declaration of function ‘attr_setf’
linux.c:43: error: ‘ATTR_DONTFOLLOW’ undeclared (first use in this function)
linux.c:43: error: (Each undeclared identifier is reported only once
linux.c:43: error: for each function it appears in.)
linux.c: In function ‘get_ptime’:
linux.c:55: warning: implicit declaration of function ‘attr_getf’
linux.c:55: error: ‘ATTR_DONTFOLLOW’ undeclared (first use in this function)
make: *** [linux.o] Fehler 1

Any suggestions?