Shake for defrag - pointless or useful ?

Program is in the repos. .. just wondering whether there is any point in using it as not much fragmentation is associated with Linux. Also is it safe/reliable ?

http://linux.die.net/man/8/shake

http://vleu.net/shake/

"Before any use, check that your partition is mounted with user_xattr. If it is not, edit your fstab to add this option then call mount -o remount MY_PARTITION. Shake can works without them, but will be less efficient (it use xattr to store information helping incremental use."
??

 

No, file fragmentation is not a problem on *most* Linux file systems. Although the file system does fragment, it does not slow performance. Why? Well, the answer is technical, but there are some good articles on the Internet that try to explain it for laymen. (NOTE: this only applies to the "ext" family of files systems). If using XFS, you might find you increase performance by running its built in defragmenting tool from time to time.

Or you can google "why doesn't linux need defragmenting." There is a lot of info out there. But, basically, unless your disk is almost full, there will never be any noticeable slowdown due to file fragmentation on ext file systems.

 

Thank you chronomatic - will have a look.
Have a great 2010 !

 

Just came across this from Ubuntu forums in connection with a sticky on ureadahead.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=8998483&postcount=1