is provided for read and write operations. The compression algorithm and cluster size 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 file system. It is only a patch to ext2 made to support the EXT2_COMPR_FL flag. It does not require user to make a new partition, and will continue to read or write existing ext2 file systems. One can consider it as simply 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 coexist nicely on ext2 partitions. The latest e2compr-branch is available for current releases of Linux 2.4, 2.6, and 3.0. The latest patch for Linux 3.0 was released in August 2011 and provides multicore and High memory support. There are also branches for Linux 2.0 and 2.2. Under other operating systems Access to ext2 partitions under Microsoft Windows is possible through an Installable File System, such as ext2ifs or ext2Fsd. Filesystem in Userspace can be used on macOS. See also e2fsprogs StegFS – a steganographic file system based on ext2 cloop List of file systems Comparison of file systems Orlov block allocator, Linux Kernel-determined default block allocator for ext2. References Notes Sourceforge e2compr project Sourceforge e2compr documentation Sourceforge e3compr project page, ext3 compression, alpha Dr. Dobb's Data Compression Newsletter Issue #46 - September 2003 Further reading External links ext2fs user-space tools Ext2Fsd GPL ext2/ext3 file system driver for Windows 2000/XP/2003/VISTA/2008 (opensource, supports read & write, works with FreeOTFE) 1993 software Disk file systems File systems supported by the Linux kernel