Resize start of Ext2?

[CS Miller]

On a related note,
parted-1.6.2 does not seem able to resize the start of an EXT2 partition.

Is there any reason for this? From my (half-forgotten) understanding of the 
classic UNIX filesystem, this should be a fairly easy task.
Assuming suffecent free space in the partion, all you should have to do
is recreate the partion header, free and bad block maps, then create a new 
list of inodes (pointing to the existing file blocks), and the directory 
hierachy.

Moving downwards is easier, as moving upwards will involve shuffling existing 
files out of the way. Making the minimum move atleast the size of the control 
blocks will make the task a lot easier (the existing control blocks can be 
kept until the ones are ready), without that much hassle for the end user.

I've had a few googles for the EXT2 layout, but haven't found that much 
explaining it in detail, so I might be missing something. A few pages 
suggested that EXT2 is sub-divided into areas, each of which has the classic 
UNIX structure, but I can't see how these would be linked together, or large 
files can span more than one area. Apart from RFTM, is there any good 
resources for this?


TIA
CS Miller


-- 
Humankind does not own the Earth, we are merely custodians for the future 
generations.