> a container nears being full. If one has 1 MB of storage available
> (allowing for file system overhead and block alignment), then 1 MB
> of data will fit, but 1 MiB will not.
In which way is the KB-vs-KiB discrepancy different from the "file
system overhead and block alignment"?
Maybe it's a higher percentage, but the end result is the same: if your
FS says you have N bytes left, it does not guarantee you that an N byte
file will fit, so you need to include some slack. And since very few
people are able to quickly compute how many blocks are needed for
a file of size N on the specific filesystem they use, you're better off
using a "safe enough" estimate. This notion of "safe" enough is one
learned empirically over the years, so whether it's 2% or 10% doesn't
really matter that much, as long as it's pretty much always the same.
> As an engineer, precision is absolutely of the essence.
When talking about the capacity of mass storage, you don't need
precision, since it just has to be large enough, rather than having to
have exactly the right size.
Engineers are very familiar with such imprecise constraints and with
the use of safety margins to account for them.
Stefan
