EXT4 Seeing Work To Speed Up Mount Times For Large File-Systems

Patches are pending that can sharply speed-up mount times of large EXT4 file-systems.

A Phoronix reader pointed us to the work this weekend on improving bitmap loading and skip non-loaded groups at cr=0/1.

The notable bit is this: "using sparse image and dm-slow virtual device of 120TB was simulated. then the image was formatted and filled using debugfs to mark ~85% of available space as busy. mount process w/o the patch couldn't complete in half an hour (according to vmstat it would take ~10-11 hours). with the patch applied mount took ~20 seconds."

So while numbers on an extreme case, this work can allow for much quicker mount times of large EXT4 file-systems.