[Bug 455024] Re: resize2fs: memory allocation failed while trying to resize

[Theodore Ts'o]

One final note, before I mute this bug.

I don't consider it a bug that you can't shrink a file system with
terabytes of disk space when you only have 256 or 512MB of memory.
More to the point, I'm not paid to make e2fsprogs work well on that
configuration.  No other file system supports shirnking at all, and I
doubt most file systems will able to handle this configuration well if
they need to repair a badly corrupted file system when you only have
this little memory (unless you enable swap and be prepared to wait for a
long time).

If someone wants to try to make e2fsprogs work well for something that
*I* consider to be an edge case (and yes, I have a bookshelf NAS box; it
has Gigabytes worth of memory; funny, that), patches will be gratefully
accepted.  Send them to the linux-ext4 mailing list.   Be warned,
though, if it trashes performance on the vast majority of deployed use
cases, I'm not going to accept the patch.

While I agree that Ubuntu should upgrade to 1.42.9, as it fixes a very
large number of bugs, including some that could cause data corruption,
it's not going to handle this particular feature request.

P.S.  My cell phone has more memory that what some of the people on this
list are proposing to use for a file server.....

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/455024

Title:
  resize2fs: memory allocation failed while trying to resize

Status in “e2fsprogs” package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  Binary package hint: e2fsprogs

  When I try to resize a big EXT3 filesystem on a RAID5 (/dev/md0) from
  5TB to 7TB i get this output:

  # resize2fs -p /dev/md0                                 
  resize2fs 1.41.9 (22-Aug-2009)
  Resizing the filesystem on /dev/md0 to 1709329888 (4k) blocks.
  Start von Durchgang 1 (max = 14904)
  Vergrößere die Inode-TabelleXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
  resize2fs: Memory allocation failed beim Versuch, die Größe von /dev/md0 zu ändern
  Please run 'e2fsck -fy /dev/md0' to fix the filesystem
  after the aborted resize operation.

  Note: Im using Ubuntu Hardy due to its LTS. But I installed the
  packages from Karmic, because they had no special dependencies, I
  could install them without any problem. The message above is from this
  updated e2fsprogs version (note the version). I get the exactly same
  message from the original e2fsprogs, except the last two lines (Please
  run...).

  I use 4KB Blocks, so EXT3 should be able to address 8TB...

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