EXT3 and large directories

[Matt Dodson]

Is this a bug or by design? Would there be a better filesystem to use
for my situation?

Matt D.

-----Original Message-----
From: Andreas Dilger [mailto:adilger at clusterfs.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, October 04, 2006 7:43 PM
To: Matt Dodson
Cc: ext3-users at redhat.com
Subject: Re: EXT3 and large directories

On Oct 04, 2006  16:33 -0500, Matt Dodson wrote:
> I have an ext3 filesystem that has several directories and each
> directory gets a large number of files inserted and then deleted over
> time. The filesystem is basically used as a temp store before files
are
> processed. The issue is over time the directory scans get extremely
slow
> even if the directories are empty. I have noticed the directories can
> range in size from 4k - 100M even when they are empty.  Is there a way
> to fix this without recreating the directories or bringing the
> filesystem offline? 

No way to fix this w/o offline e2fsck -fD.  ext3 doesn't shrink
directories
when deleting files.

Cheers, Andreas
--
Andreas Dilger
Principal Software Engineer
Cluster File Systems, Inc.