From owner-freebsd-questions Tue Dec 19 9:47:14 2000 From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Dec 19 09:47:11 2000 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from guru.mired.org (okc-65-26-235-186.mmcable.com [65.26.235.186]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 5EE6E37B400 for ; Tue, 19 Dec 2000 09:47:11 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 57902 invoked by uid 100); 19 Dec 2000 17:47:10 -0000 From: Mike Meyer MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <14911.40734.138031.889953@guru.mired.org> Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 11:47:10 -0600 (CST) To: "Scott M. Lewandowski" Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Minimum filesystem block size In-Reply-To: <131092931@toto.iv> X-Mailer: VM 6.75 under 21.1 (patch 10) "Capitol Reef" XEmacs Lucid X-face: "5Mnwy%?j>IIV\)A=):rjWL~NB2aH[}Yq8Z=u~vJ`"(,&SiLvbbz2W`;h9L,Yg`+vb1>RG% *h+%X^n0EZd>TM8_IB;a8F?(Fb"lw'IgCoyM.[Lg#r\ Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Scott M. Lewandowski types: > I am thinking of deploying qmail to take advantage of the Maildir format > that it offers. However, it seems like this will be very wasteful of space. > According to the newfs man page, the minimum disk block size is 4096 bytes. > Since Maildir stores each new mail message, as well as all archived mail > messages, as separate files, this means that each email will take up 4K of > disk space, even though my average mail message is only ~1K. Is this > correct, or am I missing something? Is there any way to use a smaller block > size on a new filesystem? You're missing fragments in the file system. Any partial blocks in a file are stored in fragments, not blocks, and fragments are shared amongst files. I always use the default (1k), but it can be as low as 512 bytes (with 4K blocks). Reread the newfs man page for details. http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Independent WWW/Unix/FreeBSD consultant, email for more information. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message