Re: slow directory listing

[Ron Peterson <rpeterso@mtholyoke.edu>]

On Fri, Jun 10, 2005 at 10:37:20AM -0400, rpeterso wrote:

> I'm setting up a new mail server, and am testing/tweaking IO.  I have
> two directories: /test/a which contains 750 mbox files totalling 8GB,
> and /test/a2, which contains the exact same number of files, same names,
> all zero length.
> ...
> The times taken to do a directory listing are significantly different.

I've become more confused, if that's possible.  I was just editing some
test script in emacs.  As part of the script creation process I used the
M-! command to pipe the output of 'ls /test/a' into a buffer.  It
snapped back almost instantly.

So this seems to have something to do w/ bash, not filesystems.  I
think.  So seems OT for this list, but I still don't understand where
the sluggishness comes from.

BTW, I just did the same test w/ XFS and the results were almost
identical.

Best.

-- 
Ron Peterson
Network & Systems Manager
Mount Holyoke College
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~rpeterso