Re: ext2fs: do directories ever shrink?

Slyglif Cain (slyglif@magerealm.com)
Mon, 13 Jul 1998 08:20:34 -0700


> From: alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk (Alan Cox)
> Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 00:39:27 +0100 (BST)
> Subject: Re: ext2fs: do directories ever shrink?
>
> > Maybe on disk. But somehow at up to 50000 files no slowdown is
> > noticeable when adding or looking up files. This is one of the
> > areas where I saw big difference in performance between FreeBSD
> > UFS and Linux ext2fs.
>
> Interesting. Is this compared to Linux 2.0 or 2.1 - ie is it smart
> caching or have they got something clever added on the UFS
> directory structure we should look at

I realize this has probably been brought up before, but wouldn't it be
possible to cache the entire directory tree/inode list from a drive?
Granted, it would take up a large amount of memory, but for systems
with a lot of memory to spare (96+ MB), it would offer a huge
performance increase. Also, it would be a good way to use memory over
64MB on motherboards which only cache up to 64MB, since even uncached
memory blows disk away. Perhaps making the amount of memory used by
this cache configurable at boot time would be helpful as well.

=====================================================================
// Chris Giard (a.k.a. Slyglif Cain) | I find my life is a lot
// EMAIL: slyglif@magerealm.com | easier the lower I keep
// URL: http://www.primenet.com/~slyglif | everyone's expectations.
// ICQ: 4481627 | --Calvin 1992

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