[Bug 640287] Re: The 'T' attribute of the /home directory should be set

[Colin Watson]

** Package changed: ubiquity (Ubuntu) => partman-target (Ubuntu)

** Changed in: partman-target (Ubuntu)
       Status: New => Triaged

** Changed in: partman-target (Ubuntu)
   Importance: Undecided => Wishlist

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Title:
  The 'T' attribute of the /home directory should be set

Status in “partman-target” package in Ubuntu:
  Triaged

Bug description:
  Binary package hint: base-files

  Detailed background:
  One of the things the outstanding performance of a linux system is based on is the highly-optimized file system that does not only try to optimize the process of finding where a certain file can be found or try to keep fragmentation low so the whole file can be read in one chunk without the need of moving the hard disk's read head during the process. It also watches tiny details. For example it watches that the physical distance between the contents of two subdirectories of the same directory on the hard disk is kept as low as possible, too.

  For most directories this makes sense:
  /etc/network/if-pre-up.d will be used shortly before /etc/network/if-up.d is, so making the distance the hard disk's read head has to cross in order to move from one of these directories to the other small is a good idea as is keeping the whole directory structure ~/.firefox as physically compact as possible.
  It also makes sense to keep the contents of the home directory of any individual user as physically compact as possible. In the ideal case the files from the user foo are in one very compact part of the hard disk, and the files owned by the user bar are in another very compact chunk of the hard disk.

  There is one exception of this rule, though:
  It does not make sense to make the individual subdirs of /home to be as close to each other as possible since this would mean that the file system has to choose if it wants to keep this file from the user foo as close as possible to that file from the user bar --- or if it wants to keep this file from the user foo as close as possible to the other files from the user foo. Which in turn makes the files of the user foo to be spread over a bigger part of the hard disk than necessary.

  Poposed enhancement:
  add a
  chattr +T /home
  to the post-install-script. This allows the file system to put every subdirectory of /home into a different physical place on the hard disk --- which in turn allows it to to keep each of these physical places as compact as possible.

  Source:
  The manpage of the chattr command (chattr(1)) contains the following paragraph:
         A directory with the 'T' attribute will be deemed  to  be  the  top  of
         directory  hierarchies  for  the purposes of the Orlov block allocator.
         This is a hint to the block allocator used by ext3 and  ext4  that  the
         subdirectories under this directory are not related, and thus should be
         spread apart for allocation purposes.   For example it is a  very  good
         idea  to  set  the  'T'  attribute  on  the  /home  directory,  so that
         /home/john and /home/mary are placed into separate block  groups.   For
         directories  where this attribute is not set, the Orlov block allocator
         will try to group subdirectories closer together where possible.

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
  Package: base-files 5.0.0ubuntu22
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.35-21.31-generic 2.6.35.4
  Uname: Linux 2.6.35-21-generic i686
  Architecture: i386
  Date: Thu Sep 16 08:25:56 2010
  EcryptfsInUse: Yes
  ProcEnviron:
   LANG=en_GB.utf8
   SHELL=/bin/bash
  SourcePackage: base-files

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