Shrinking Filesystems... is it important?

[Bob Shair]

While we're talking about dynamically shrinking filesystems, and whether
AIX V3 might someday provide that facility, let me ask a purely
hypothetical question... What's it worth?

I'll confess to being pretty much of an old fogy when it comes
to using computers.  I type instead of mouse; I don't usually 
bother to run X; I'm pretty firmly stuck in the 70's.  
I usually opt for performance rather than new function in computing.
(The trend, though, is running strongly the other way).

There's No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.

If we want dynamically shrinkable filesystems, surely the developers
will add something like additional backwards chains... I don't know
what (I've no connection with development).  Whatever it is, it will
take space on disk, take additional instructions to process, update
or skip over, and end up slowing disk performance to some extent.

We've gotten along in Unix for some time now without this feature.

What's it worth?  2 pct?  5 pct?  20 pct lengthening of disk I/O 
times?

Inquiring Minds want to know!
-- 

Bob Shair                          shair at chgvmic1.vnet.ibm.com
Scientific Computing Specialist    SHAIR at UIUCVMD (bitnet)
IBM Champaign