linux-ext4 - Re: [PATCH] e2fsprogs: Fix how we treat user-spcified filesystem size

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Date:	Wed, 2 Feb 2011 12:56:21 -0500
From:	Greg Freemyer <greg.freemyer@...il.com>
To:	Lukas Czerner <lczerner@...hat.com>
Cc:	Andreas Dilger <adilger@...ger.ca>, linux-ext4@...r.kernel.org,
	tytso@....edu
Subject: Re: [PATCH] e2fsprogs: Fix how we treat user-spcified filesystem size

On Wed, Feb 2, 2011 at 5:12 AM, Lukas Czerner <lczerner@...hat.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 1 Feb 2011, Greg Freemyer wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Feb 1, 2011 at 3:37 PM, Andreas Dilger <adilger@...ger.ca> wrote:
>> > On 2011-02-01, at 12:18, Lukas Czerner wrote:
>> >> +Optionally, the
>> >> +.I filesystem-size
>> >> +parameter may be suffixed by one of the following the units
>> >> +designators: 'b', 's', 'K', 'M', or 'G',
>> >> +for blocks count, 512 byte sectors, kilobytes, megabytes, or gigabytes,
>> >> +respectively.
>> >
>> > My reading of parse_num_blocks() shows that 'T' is also accepted as a suffix for terabytes, which I was otherwise going to suggest be added, since this is the normal size for filesystems today.  It might be worthwhile _briefly_ mentioning here that these are binary/power-of-two values and not decimal values, instead of the rant further below.
>> >
>> > Minor technical nit - the proper metric value is lower-case 'k' for kilo, though the upper-case 'M', 'G', and 'T' are correct for mega-, giga-, and terabytes.
>>
>> <pedantic>
>> If they are powers of 2, they are: kibibytes, mebibytes, gibibytes,
>> and tebibytes.
>>
>> See the chart on the right of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibibyte
>>
>> Many linux tools have already moved to these names and abbreviations.
>> (TiB not TB, etc.)
>> <\pedantic>
>>
>> Greg
>>
>
> Right, that's why there is the "rant" about it being called kilobytes,
> but still treated as binary, not decimal unit. But Andreas is right
> that it is not necessary to have one paragraph grumbling about the
> stupid-sounding kibibytes and so on.
>
> So, what I am going to do is to cope with the standard and use those
> stupid-sounding binary prefixes (kibi- etc.), remove the "rant" and add
> one line note for people to be really sure that it is meant to be a
> binary unit.
>
> Thanks!
> -Lukas

Lukas,

I'm glad you did that.  I see too often:

Fdisk is broken, I can only put a 150 gigabyte partition on my 160
gigabyte drive.

Hopefully people will realize the difference when they see its a 150
Gibibyte partition on a 160 Gigabyte drive.

Greg

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