E2compr is a small patch against the ext2 filesystem that allows on-the-fly compression and decompression. It compresses only regular files; the administrative data (superblock, inodes, directory contents etc.) are not compressed (mainly for safety reasons). Access to compressed blocks is provided for read and write operations. The compression algorithm and cluster size (see section Clusters) is specified on a per-file basis. Directories can also be marked for compression, in which case every newly created file in the directory will be automatically compressed with the same cluster size and the same algorithm that was specified for the directory.
E2compr is not a new filesystem. It is only a patch to the ext2
filesystem made to support the EXT2_COMPR_FL flag. It does not
require you to make a new partition, and will continue to read or write
existing ext2 filesystems. You should consider it is only a way for the
read and write routines to access files that could have been created by
a simple utility similar to gzip or compress. Compressed and
uncompressed files will coexist nicely on your ext2 partitions.
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