[Samba] Performance issue on AIX when deleting files in a directory with a large number of files

[Jeremy Allison]

On Wed, May 10, 2006 at 10:17:53AM -0400, Claus Lund wrote:
> 
> We have an application that creates a large number of files in a single
> directory. At peak times the number of files in that directory get up around
> 150,000. The files are around 10-200KB in size. When I try to delete files
> out of that directory then things get really slow ... up to 2-3 seconds per
> file ... and the CPU utilization on the server goes up near 100%.
> If I delete files out of that directory directly on the box then it goes
> very quickly so it seems like this is definitely a Samba issue.

This may be the client rescanning the directory after a delete.
If the application is braindamaged enough to create 150k files
in a directory it's stupid enough to rescan also.

> I tried the suggestions on this page:
> http://mirrors.uol.com.br/pub/samba/HOWTO/Samba-LargeDirectory-HOWTO
> 
> But that didn't make any difference either.
> 
> I also put together a Linux test box (1.5GHz P4, Ubuntu Dapper Beta 7, Samba
> 3.0.22, ext3 file system) and the performance issue is not present on that
> platform.

Hmmm. So the problem doesn't occur on a Linux+ext3 box, but does
on an AIX+jfs box - with the same version of Samba....

I can see a pointer to the problem here, and it doesn't look like
Samba to me :-).

Jeremy.