Re: How many files to create in one directory?

Eric Sandeen
2014-01-27T19:48:35Z

On 1/27/14, 1:39 PM, Theodore Ts'o wrote:
>> It will depend on the length of the filenames. But by my calculations,
>> for average 28-char filenames, it's closer to 30 million.
>
> Note that there will be some very significant performance problems
> well before a directory gets that big. For example, just simply doing
> a readdir + stat on all of the files in that directory (or a readdir +
> unlink, etc.) will very likely result in extremely unacceptable
> performance.

Yep, that's the max possible, not the max useable. ;)

(Although, I'm not sure in practice what max useable looks like, TBH).

-Eric

> So if you can find some other way of avoiding allowing the file system
> that big (i.e., using a real database instead of trying to use a file
> system as a database, etc.), I'd strongly suggest that you consider
> those alternatives.
>
> Regards,
>
> - Ted
>