[olug] Anyone defragging their linux servers?

[Will Langford]

I recall defragging ext2 on 2.0 kernels ages ago.  Ya gotta boot single user
mode or similar to try to check any normally-live fs... all the defraggers
are 'offline'.  There's a few other user-land defraggers, but I think they
work just by copying the files on top of themselves, hoping the low level
drivers will defragment the new file as writing.  I think... 'shake' (???)
was the name of the tool.  I would steer clear of e2fsdefrag.  You'll eat
ext3 fs's with it.
ext2/3 is very resistant to fragmentation, and for a web server that's not
writing lots of decently sized files (ie: some kind of media streamer that
is accepting input from one to possibly multiple sources), fragmentation
shouldn't be a concern.

You can always check the fragmentation level of a volume with `e2fsck -n
/dev/foo`.  -n being 'dont do anything' ... and after it finishes all the
tests, it'll print out a single non-contiguous line.