[PATCH 04/10] AXFS: axfs_inode.c

[Jörn Engel]

On Fri, 22 August 2008 18:08:51 +0100, Phillip Lougher wrote:
> 
> Squashfs stores significantly more metadata than cramfs.  Remember 
> cramfs has no support for filesystems > ~ 16Mbytes, no inode timestamps, 
> truncates uid/gids, no hard-links, no nlink counts, no hashed 
> directories,  no unique inode numbers.  If Squashfs didn't compress the 
> metadata it would be significantly larger than cramfs.

Elsewhere in this maze of threads Arnd claimed to have tested the
benefits of metadata compression - and it making little impact.

My guess is that it would make a large impact if metadata would be a
significant part of the filesystem image.  Usually metadata is close
enough to 0% to be mistaken for statistical noise.  So compressing it
makes a significant impact on an insignificant amount of data.

Jörn

-- 
One of my most productive days was throwing away 1000 lines of code.
-- Ken Thompson.