[Bug 455024] Re: resize2fs: memory allocation failed while trying to resize

[Theodore Ts'o]

256MB?   Cough, choke.   Yeah, I'm not at __all__ surprised that
resize2fs required more memory than that.

In fact, there will be certain sorts of file system corruption or
certain file system patterns (i.e., using lots and lots of hard links),
where it's almost certain that 256MB, or even 512MB, won't be enough
memory for e2fsck to repair a corrupted file system in some cases.
(E2fsck was architected to trade memory usage for run time, on the
assumption that most of the time, when you have a large file system, you
also have adequate amounts of memory, and people would prefer that fsck
run as quickly as possible, especially when during boot there is no
other use for the memory.     I've done some work so that e2fsck could
work well on a system with only 4GB of memory, and two dozen 2TB disks
each mounted as a separate file system, so the latest versions of
e2fsprogs are a bit better about optimizing memory usage.   But note
that I'm talking about gigabytes of memory, not megabytes....)

With a 32-bit system, userspace is limited to 3GB of virtual address
space, which is why I asked the question --- on x86 with PAE, you can
have a 32-bit system with 32GB of memory, but a single process won't be
able to use more than 3GB of that memory.  But if this is a system with
only 256MB of memory, that's not going to be the limit; the limiting
factor will be your physical memory and your swap.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/455024

Title:
  resize2fs: memory allocation failed while trying to resize

Status in “e2fsprogs” package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  Binary package hint: e2fsprogs

  When I try to resize a big EXT3 filesystem on a RAID5 (/dev/md0) from
  5TB to 7TB i get this output:

  # resize2fs -p /dev/md0                                 
  resize2fs 1.41.9 (22-Aug-2009)
  Resizing the filesystem on /dev/md0 to 1709329888 (4k) blocks.
  Start von Durchgang 1 (max = 14904)
  Vergrößere die Inode-TabelleXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
  resize2fs: Memory allocation failed beim Versuch, die Größe von /dev/md0 zu ändern
  Please run 'e2fsck -fy /dev/md0' to fix the filesystem
  after the aborted resize operation.

  Note: Im using Ubuntu Hardy due to its LTS. But I installed the
  packages from Karmic, because they had no special dependencies, I
  could install them without any problem. The message above is from this
  updated e2fsprogs version (note the version). I get the exactly same
  message from the original e2fsprogs, except the last two lines (Please
  run...).

  I use 4KB Blocks, so EXT3 should be able to address 8TB...

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