Re: Shrinking an XFS filesystem is a crucial feature!

[Andi Kleen <ak@xxxxxxx>]

On Sat, Jan 19, 2002 at 06:54:50AM -0600, Steve Lord wrote:
> Of the two thinks Karl asked for, the repair change is probably
> about a days work for someone who does not know the code. And then
> some very careful init script work to make sure the only way you ever
> use it is in single user mode followed by an immediate shutdown. Online
> repair is the equivalent of pulling the table cloth out from under the
> bone china dishes without anyone noticing. With ext2 its a tea party for
> 4, with xfs it is a banquet for 100 people. With vxfs it was designed
> in from the start.

About online fsck: what could work is to use a writable LVM[1] or EVMS
snapshot of the filesystem and fsck the snapshot.  When you detect an 
error unmount the main file system (it is unsafe to use now anyways) and 
fsck it again. 

-Andi

[1] Current LVM needs a small patch to make snapshots writable.