Re: slow directory listing

[Ron Peterson <rpeterso@mtholyoke.edu>]

On Sat, Jun 11, 2005 at 12:12:52AM +0200, Bodo Eggert wrote:
> Ron Peterson <rpeterso@mtholyoke.edu> wrote:
> > 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.
> 
> Try ls|cat and take a look at $LS_OPTIONS and $LS_COLORS. I suspect your
> ls tries to use some magic on the files to determine the color.

ls was aliased to 'ls -F', it just took me a while to notice...

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