Large file deletion on large directories

[David Collier-Brown - Sun Canada]

Trevor Nuridin wrote:
| I am using a samba server for a large number of files. It is a MS VSS
| database which splits it's data into a-z directories and generally in each
| directory I have about 30,000 files. When trying to delete files from the
| VSS client, the file deletion process is very slow, taking around 15 seconds
| per file

	Just by accident, I'm looking at a related issue this week
	at work (;-))
	
	Easy answer: you're saturating the disk, so you should RAID
	the data drives across a large number of disk heads. With
	10 head, not only are the deletes  ~9 times faster, but
	you won't tie the disk up doing huge directory-reads while
	some other user is trying to access a different file.
	
	Hard answer: figure out how to hash/btree an ext2 directory without
	requiring you to newfs the disk to upgrade it to the new
	format...
	
	
--dave

--
David Collier-Brown in Boston
Phone: (781) 442-0734, Room BUR03-3632