Fragmentation on ext2/ext3/ext4 filesystems

If you want know how fragmented a file is on an ext2/ext3/ext4 filesystem there are a couple of methods of finding out.  One method is to use hdparm, but one needs CAP_SYS_RAWIO capability to do so, hence run with sudo:

sudo hdparm --fibmap /boot/initrd.img-2.6.38-9-generic

/boot/initrd.img-2.6.38-9-generic:
 filesystem blocksize 4096, begins at LBA 24000512; assuming 512 byte sectors.
 byte_offset  begin_LBA    end_LBA    sectors
           0   35747840   35764223      16384
     8388608   39942144   39958527      16384
    16777216   40954664   40957423       2760

Alternatively, one can use the filefrag utility (part of the e2fsprogs package) for reporting the number of extents:

filefrag /boot/initrd.img-2.6.38-9-generic
/boot/initrd.img-2.6.38-9-generic: 3 extents found

..or more verbosely:

filefrag -v /boot/initrd.img-2.6.38-9-generic
Filesystem type is: ef53
File size of /boot/initrd.img-2.6.38-9-generic is 18189027 (4441 blocks, blocksize 4096)
 ext logical physical expected length flags
   0       0  1468416            2048
   1    2048  1992704  1470463   2048
   2    4096  2119269  1994751    345 eof
/boot/initrd.img-2.6.38-9-generic: 3 extents found

Well, that's useful. So, going one step further, how many free extents are available on the filesystem? Well, e2freefrag is the tool for this:

sudo e2freefrag /dev/sda1
Device: /dev/sda1
Blocksize: 4096 bytes
Total blocks: 2999808
Free blocks: 1669815 (55.7%)

Min. free extent: 4 KB
Max. free extent: 1370924 KB
Avg. free extent: 6160 KB
Num. free extent: 1084

HISTOGRAM OF FREE EXTENT SIZES:
Extent Size Range :  Free extents   Free Blocks  Percent
    4K...    8K-  :           450           450    0.03%
    8K...   16K-  :            97           227    0.01%
   16K...   32K-  :            99           527    0.03%
   32K...   64K-  :           134          1475    0.09%
   64K...  128K-  :            96          2193    0.13%
  128K...  256K-  :            50          2235    0.13%
  256K...  512K-  :            30          2643    0.16%
  512K... 1024K-  :            36          6523    0.39%
    1M...    2M-  :            36         13125    0.79%
    2M...    4M-  :            14          9197    0.55%
    4M...    8M-  :            15         18841    1.13%
    8M...   16M-  :             8         17515    1.05%
   16M...   32M-  :             7         38276    2.29%
   32M...   64M-  :             3         39409    2.36%
   64M...  128M-  :             3         67865    4.06%
  512M... 1024M-  :             4        802922   48.08%
    1G...    2G-  :             2        646392   38.71%

..thus reminding me to do some housekeeping and remove some junk from my file system... :-)