[ic] Performance hit from having many images in one directory?

Mike Heins mike at perusion.com
Tue Aug 23 13:30:48 EDT 2005


Quoting Davor Ocelic (docelic at mail.inet.hr):
> 
> > >    1. Switch filesystems to XFS or ReiserFS for their tree-based
> > >       scheme. They don't degrade like ext2.
> > >
> > I like this idea.  Are there any good reasons why I *shouldn't* switch to 
> > one of these filing systems?  If not, then I guess this has to be the way to 
> > go with any new partitions?
> 
> I use ext3 because of all the established tools that are available for it
> (the stuff from e2fsprogs and e2tools packages, for example).
> 
> Also, I never had the need to try it myself, but I hear that ext3 filesystems
> mount with larger set of default options than xfs or reiserfs do. Mounting 
> ext3 filesystems with options equal to default reiser or xfs supposedly
> achieves excellent performance.

I am not sure that you are getting why we are talking about this -- we
are talking specifically about directory lookup performance for many
thousands of files in a single directory.

I don't think anything has changed recently in the ext2/ext3 schema
which addresses this.

I personally have noticed slowdowns of systems when the number of files
in a directory gets into the thousands. It is a very real problem that
you need to think about if you have large file sets. I have personally
always used the hashing scheme, partly because running directory
listings on very large directory is difficult. But changing filesystems
is a viable option.

-- 
Mike Heins
Perusion -- Expert Interchange Consulting    http://www.perusion.com/
phone +1.765.647.1295  tollfree 800-949-1889 <mike at perusion.com>

There's nothing sweeter than life nor more precious than time.
-- Barney


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