Re: UFS2 limits

2008-11-09 Thread Ian
On Sun, 9 Nov 2008 13:10:46 Jeremy Chadwick wrote:
 On Sun, Nov 09, 2008 at 01:40:51AM +, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
  Hi,
  I have a FreeBSD server that has about 10,500 subdirectories within a
  single directory.
  This number will keep rising and I assume UFS2 has a limit to the number
  of sub-directories in a single directory - can anyone tell me what it is?

 As far as I know, there is no such limit on the number of files/dirs
 inside of a directory.

 I don't want to change the topic of discussion, but I *highly* recommend
 you ***stop*** whatever it is you're doing that is creating such a
 directory structure.  Software which has to iterate through that
 directory using opendir() and readdir() will get slower and slower as
 time goes on.

 If this is something you've written or have control over or can work
 with engineers in regards to, I recommend you change your directory
 naming scheme to have separate subdirectories with the first 2 or 3
 letters of the directory you wish to create.  E.g.:

 /some/place/00/00ilikezeros/*
 /some/place/01/01binaryheaven/*
 /some/place/aa/aardvarks/*
 /some/place/ab/abuse/*
 /some/place/ac/actuary/*
 ...
 /some/place/xy/xylophones/*

 You get the point.

 Traversing this structure is much more efficient, and requires very
 little code change on your part.  Those who run nameservers that host
 many zones, for example, use this structure to ensure the daemon doesn't
 take 32498231 years to start up.

  What about ZFS?
 
  At some point I'll have to re-arrange things so that I have a deeper
  directory structure, just wondering when I'll hit the limit so I can plan
  in advance :-)

 What baffles me is why you're looking at this problem from a  how can
 the filesystem solve this engineering mistake I made for me standpoint,
 rather than how can I solve this engineering mistake I made so that it
 doesn't impact the filesystem.  Very strange.  Sometimes looking at
 things in a different light makes all the difference.

 Hope this helps.

 P.S. -- I hope this mail makes it to you, because your From line is
 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (I'll be surprised if your account name really is
 that!).


Thanks for that Jeremy. I didn't invent this structure, but I daresay I can 
either modify it or get the original writer to do that. I never really gave 
it a thought before now - it was the system I was given to work with and it's 
worked fine so far, except when I try to list the contents of the directory - 
that takes ages!
All the folders are 7 digit numbers and we are up to approx. 0010500 entries 
(ie subdirs) so far. 
I guess it will just be a matter of experimenting to find the optimum number 
of sub-sub-directories per sub-directory :-/

Oh, and yes, that email address does work - I use it for mailing lists and 
other stuff where I'm likely to get spammed - it's ironic really :-)

Cheers,
-- 
Ian
gpg key: http://home.swiftdsl.com.au/~imoore/no-spam.asc


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Re: UFS2 limits

2008-11-09 Thread H.fazaeli

   The number of files and sub-directories is limited by the number
   of available inodes which is fixed at the time you create the
   file system (by -i argument to newfs(8)). Anyway, stick with
   Jeremy's advise if you do not like trouble.
   Jeremy Chadwick wrote:

On Sun, Nov 09, 2008 at 01:40:51AM +, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:


Hi,
I have a FreeBSD server that has about 10,500 subdirectories within a single
directory.
This number will keep rising and I assume UFS2 has a limit to the number of
sub-directories in a single directory - can anyone tell me what it is?


As far as I know, there is no such limit on the number of files/dirs
inside of a directory.

I don't want to change the topic of discussion, but I *highly* recommend
you ***stop*** whatever it is you're doing that is creating such a
directory structure.  Software which has to iterate through that
directory using opendir() and readdir() will get slower and slower as
time goes on.

If this is something you've written or have control over or can work
with engineers in regards to, I recommend you change your directory
naming scheme to have separate subdirectories with the first 2 or 3
letters of the directory you wish to create.  E.g.:

/some/place/00/00ilikezeros/*
/some/place/01/01binaryheaven/*
/some/place/aa/aardvarks/*
/some/place/ab/abuse/*
/some/place/ac/actuary/*
...
/some/place/xy/xylophones/*

You get the point.

Traversing this structure is much more efficient, and requires very
little code change on your part.  Those who run nameservers that host
many zones, for example, use this structure to ensure the daemon doesn't
take 32498231 years to start up.



What about ZFS?

At some point I'll have to re-arrange things so that I have a deeper directory
structure, just wondering when I'll hit the limit so I can plan in advance :-)


What baffles me is why you're looking at this problem from a  how can
the filesystem solve this engineering mistake I made for me standpoint,
rather than how can I solve this engineering mistake I made so that it
doesn't impact the filesystem.  Very strange.  Sometimes looking at
things in a different light makes all the difference.

Hope this helps.

P.S. -- I hope this mail makes it to you, because your From line is
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (I'll be surprised if your account name really is
that!).



--


Best regards.

Hooman Fazaeli [3][EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sepehr S. T. Co. Ltd.

Web: [4]http://www.sepehrs.com
Tel: (9821)88975701-2
Fax: (9821)88983352

References

   1. mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
   2. mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
   3. mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
   4. http://www.sepehrs.com/
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Re: UFS2 limits

2008-11-09 Thread Erik Trulsson
On Sat, Nov 08, 2008 at 06:40:46PM -0800, Jeremy Chadwick wrote:
 On Sun, Nov 09, 2008 at 01:40:51AM +, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
  Hi,
  I have a FreeBSD server that has about 10,500 subdirectories within a single
  directory.
  This number will keep rising and I assume UFS2 has a limit to the number of
  sub-directories in a single directory - can anyone tell me what it is?
 
 As far as I know, there is no such limit on the number of files/dirs
 inside of a directory.

Actually there is.  Each i-node on the disk contains a field telling how
many hard-links point to that inode. This field is a (signed) 16-bit value,
meaning the maximum number of hardlinks allowed is 32767.
Each subdirectory created contains a hardlink ('..') to its parent, thus
limiting the number of subdirectories to a single directory to less than 32767.

Note that this does not limit the number of files you can have in a single
directory, since normal files do not contain hardlinks to the parent
directory, but there are of course limits to the total number of files and
directories you can have on a single filesystem based on how many inodes
were created when the filesystem was first created.




-- 
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Erik Trulsson
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Re: UFS2 limits

2008-11-09 Thread Jeremy Chadwick
On Sun, Nov 09, 2008 at 10:35:21AM +0100, Erik Trulsson wrote:
 On Sat, Nov 08, 2008 at 06:40:46PM -0800, Jeremy Chadwick wrote:
  On Sun, Nov 09, 2008 at 01:40:51AM +, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
   Hi,
   I have a FreeBSD server that has about 10,500 subdirectories within a 
   single
   directory.
   This number will keep rising and I assume UFS2 has a limit to the number 
   of
   sub-directories in a single directory - can anyone tell me what it is?
  
  As far as I know, there is no such limit on the number of files/dirs
  inside of a directory.
 
 Actually there is.  Each i-node on the disk contains a field telling how
 many hard-links point to that inode. This field is a (signed) 16-bit value,
 meaning the maximum number of hardlinks allowed is 32767.
 Each subdirectory created contains a hardlink ('..') to its parent, thus
 limiting the number of subdirectories to a single directory to less than 
 32767.

I hadn't even thought of that (the inode possibility did cross my mind,
but I figured inode counts would a) apply to the filesystem as a whole,
and b) apply to both files and directories.

Wow, thanks for the tip!  Learning something new every day...  :-)

 Note that this does not limit the number of files you can have in a single
 directory, since normal files do not contain hardlinks to the parent
 directory, but there are of course limits to the total number of files and
 directories you can have on a single filesystem based on how many inodes
 were created when the filesystem was first created.

-- 
| Jeremy Chadwickjdc at parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking   http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator  Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.  PGP: 4BD6C0CB |

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Re: UFS2 limits

2008-11-09 Thread Roland Smith
On Sun, Nov 09, 2008 at 10:47:11AM +0100, Polytropon wrote:
 On Sun, 9 Nov 2008 10:35:21 +0100, Erik Trulsson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
  Note that this does not limit the number of files you can have in a single
  directory, since normal files do not contain hardlinks to the parent
  directory, but there are of course limits to the total number of files and
  directories you can have on a single filesystem based on how many inodes
  were created when the filesystem was first created.
 
 Maybe this sounds stupid, but... given that a file system
 can hold n entries. What happens when a program tries to
 create file number n + 1?

The call to the open(2) system call will fail for one of the reasons
given in the manual page.
 
 I do ask this in order to explore if this could have been
 the reason for my massive data loss and UFS file system
 corruption.

My first point of inquiry in such a case would be if the hardware is
OK. If you're using (P|S)ATA|SCSI-3 devices, install smartmontools from
ports and test the disk with smartctl(8).

Roland
-- 
R.F.Smith   http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/
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Re: UFS2 limits

2008-11-09 Thread Polytropon
On Sun, 9 Nov 2008 10:35:21 +0100, Erik Trulsson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Note that this does not limit the number of files you can have in a single
 directory, since normal files do not contain hardlinks to the parent
 directory, but there are of course limits to the total number of files and
 directories you can have on a single filesystem based on how many inodes
 were created when the filesystem was first created.

Maybe this sounds stupid, but... given that a file system
can hold n entries. What happens when a program tries to
create file number n + 1?

I do ask this in order to explore if this could have been
the reason for my massive data loss and UFS file system
corruption.



-- 
Polytropon
From Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...
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Re: UFS2 limits

2008-11-09 Thread Chris Pratt


On Nov 9, 2008, at 12:18 AM, Ian wrote:


On Sun, 9 Nov 2008 13:10:46 Jeremy Chadwick wrote:
On Sun, Nov 09, 2008 at 01:40:51AM +, [EMAIL PROTECTED]  
wrote:

Hi,
I have a FreeBSD server that has about 10,500 subdirectories  
within a

single directory.
This number will keep rising and I assume UFS2 has a limit to the  
number
of sub-directories in a single directory - can anyone tell me  
what it is?


As far as I know, there is no such limit on the number of files/dirs
inside of a directory.


Thanks for that Jeremy. I didn't invent this structure, but I  
daresay I can
either modify it or get the original writer to do that. I never  
really gave
it a thought before now - it was the system I was given to work  
with and it's
worked fine so far, except when I try to list the contents of the  
directory -

that takes ages!
All the folders are 7 digit numbers and we are up to approx.  
0010500 entries

(ie subdirs) so far.
I guess it will just be a matter of experimenting to find the  
optimum number

of sub-sub-directories per sub-directory :-/


On the issue of possible inode limitations, it may be of some  
reassurance
(or alarm ;-)) to look at the output of df -i. This will tell you if  
you are close
to any limit on inodes. Between that and your already well known  
counts of
directories and rate of creation, you can gauge how much time you  
have to

change your app.

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Re: UFS2 limits

2008-11-09 Thread Erik Trulsson
On Sun, Nov 09, 2008 at 10:47:11AM +0100, Polytropon wrote:
 On Sun, 9 Nov 2008 10:35:21 +0100, Erik Trulsson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
  Note that this does not limit the number of files you can have in a single
  directory, since normal files do not contain hardlinks to the parent
  directory, but there are of course limits to the total number of files and
  directories you can have on a single filesystem based on how many inodes
  were created when the filesystem was first created.
 
 Maybe this sounds stupid, but... given that a file system
 can hold n entries. What happens when a program tries to
 create file number n + 1?
 
 I do ask this in order to explore if this could have been
 the reason for my massive data loss and UFS file system
 corruption.

I haven't tested what actually happens, but what should happen is that the
attempt to create file n+1 will simply fail with some appropriate error code
(see open(2) or mkdir(2) for details.)  It is certainly not supposed to
cause any kind of files system corruption.


-- 
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Erik Trulsson
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Re: UFS2 limits

2008-11-09 Thread Matthew Seaman

Jeremy Chadwick wrote:


I don't want to change the topic of discussion, but I *highly* recommend
you ***stop*** whatever it is you're doing that is creating such a
directory structure.  Software which has to iterate through that
directory using opendir() and readdir() will get slower and slower as
time goes on.


With the implementation of UFS_DIRHASH the practical limit on the
size of directories is now a great deal larger. In particular
the slow down caused by linear search through the contents has been 
eliminated.  See ffs(7).  10,000 files or sub-directories, whist

not a particularly elegant setup, is actually not unworkable
nowadays.

As for the maximum number of subdirectories it is possible to create
on UFS2 -- it is limited by the inode structure to a 16 bit quantity.

% jot 10 1 | xargs mkdir -v
[...]
32725
32726
32727
32728
32729
32730
3273mkdir: 32766: Too many links
mkdir: 32767: Too many links
mkdir: 32768: Too many links
mkdir: 32769: Too many links
mkdir: 32770: Too many links
mkdir: 32771: Too many links
[...]

Which is 32768 - 2 for the '.' and '..' links.  Trying to create too
many subdirectories just results in mkdir failing: the filesystem
itself is not damaged.

Cheers,

Matthew

--
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.   7 Priory Courtyard
 Flat 3
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey Ramsgate
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Re: UFS2 limits

2008-11-09 Thread Wojciech Puchar

Hi,
I have a FreeBSD server that has about 10,500 subdirectories within a single
directory.
This number will keep rising and I assume UFS2 has a limit to the number of
sub-directories in a single directory - can anyone tell me what it is?



make sure your kernel is compiled with

options UFS_DIRHASH


or it will be slow


the limit is 32765, just because link count is 2 bytes wide and each 
subdir adds two to base directory. you have to change to 2 level 
hierarchy.



with files - i started creating empty files, it turned slow after 
about 32.

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Re: UFS2 limits

2008-11-09 Thread Wojciech Puchar


With the implementation of UFS_DIRHASH the practical limit on the
size of directories is now a great deal larger. In particular
the slow down caused by linear search through the contents has been


but - try making (by shell script for example) empty files.

it creates it fast and rapidly slows at about 32 on my machine.

i have UFS_DIRHASH
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Re: UFS2 limits

2008-11-09 Thread Robert Huff

Wojciech Puchar writes:

  the limit is 32765, just because link count is 2 bytes wide and
  each subdir adds two to base directory. you have to change to 2
  level hierarchy.

Question (for anyone who has an informed opinion):
If there any technical reason that couldn't be expanded to 32
bits?  Or is it possible but not done for historical or
policy reasons, and if so what are they?


Robert Huff

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Re: UFS2 limits

2008-11-09 Thread Jeremy Chadwick
On Sun, Nov 09, 2008 at 11:02:07AM -0500, Robert Huff wrote:
 Wojciech Puchar writes:
 
   the limit is 32765, just because link count is 2 bytes wide and
   each subdir adds two to base directory. you have to change to 2
   level hierarchy.
 
   Question (for anyone who has an informed opinion):
   If there any technical reason that couldn't be expanded to 32
 bits?  Or is it possible but not done for historical or
 policy reasons, and if so what are they?

At this point, I think this topic should be relocated to the freebsd-fs
mailing list.

-- 
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| Parodius Networking   http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator  Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.  PGP: 4BD6C0CB |

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Re: UFS2 limits

2008-11-09 Thread Dan
Jeremy Chadwick([EMAIL PROTECTED])@2008.11.08 18:40:46 -0800:
 I don't want to change the topic of discussion, but I *highly* recommend
 you ***stop*** whatever it is you're doing that is creating such a
 directory structure.  Software which has to iterate through that
 directory using opendir() and readdir() will get slower and slower as
 time goes on.

On a related note there are filesystems that handle many
files/directories very quickly. They use alternate tree data structures
that behave quicker. ReiserFS is one of them. I believe XFS does quite
well too. FreeBSD should have adapted XFS in addition to ZFS. ZFS is a
resource monster. Shame, really. XFS is freely available in Linux for a
number of years. Hammer, the new FS for FreeBSDs is available for
DragonflyBSD.
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Re: UFS2 limits

2008-11-09 Thread Erik Trulsson
On Sun, Nov 09, 2008 at 11:02:07AM -0500, Robert Huff wrote:
 
 Wojciech Puchar writes:
 
   the limit is 32765, just because link count is 2 bytes wide and
   each subdir adds two to base directory. you have to change to 2
   level hierarchy.
 
   Question (for anyone who has an informed opinion):
   If there any technical reason that couldn't be expanded to 32
 bits?  Or is it possible but not done for historical or
 policy reasons, and if so what are they?

It probably could be expanded to 32 bits if that was deemed useful.
Doing that would of course require re-creating any existing filesystems
since the on-disk format would change, which would be a PITA for users,
but certainly possible.

It is rare that anybody actually encounter this limit however.  I would
even say that if you have more than a couple of thousand entries in a single
directory, then you are probably doing something wrong.

Personally I cannot think of any situation where one would actually want
(let alone need) as many as 3 or more subdirectories in a single
directory.




-- 
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Re: UFS2 limits

2008-11-09 Thread Erik Trulsson
On Sun, Nov 09, 2008 at 12:48:51PM -0500, Dan wrote:
 Erik Trulsson([EMAIL PROTECTED])@2008.11.09 17:53:14 +0100:
  Personally I cannot think of any situation where one would actually want
  (let alone need) as many as 3 or more subdirectories in a single
  directory.
 
 I've seen some Java apps that use the FS as the DB. Nothing wrong with
 that. I think an FS can be quite a good DB, if implemented well. This gives
 many data manipulation options with traditional FS tools, shell
 scripts, etc.

Lets just say that there are reasons why the major database systems
generally use their own methods to store and organize the data rather
than rely on the file system for that.

Besides, for most database applications I can think of, what you would
need are lots of *files*, which do not have any special limitations other
than the the total space and number of i-nodes on the filesystem.
Even if you were using the FS as a DB I can't think of any good reason
to need 3+ subdirectories in a single directory.

 
 Large Maildirs for postfix and qmail/Courier. Some people don't delete
 email at all.

Again, that requires lots of files, not lots of subdirectories.



-- 
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Re: UFS2 limits

2008-11-09 Thread Wojciech Puchar

If you really think HAMMER accomplishes the same goals as ZFS, you are
sadly mistaken.


it will be OK to achieve the goals it is advertised to achieve.
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Re: UFS2 limits

2008-11-09 Thread Dan
Erik Trulsson([EMAIL PROTECTED])@2008.11.09 17:53:14 +0100:
 Personally I cannot think of any situation where one would actually want
 (let alone need) as many as 3 or more subdirectories in a single
 directory.

I've seen some Java apps that use the FS as the DB. Nothing wrong with
that. I think an FS can be quite a good DB, if implemented well. This gives
many data manipulation options with traditional FS tools, shell
scripts, etc.

Large Maildirs for postfix and qmail/Courier. Some people don't delete
email at all.
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Re: UFS2 limits

2008-11-09 Thread Erik Trulsson
On Sun, Nov 09, 2008 at 12:33:06PM -0600, Modulok wrote:
 Personally I cannot think of any situation where one would actually want
 (let alone need) as many as 3 or more subdirectories in a single
 directory.
 
 No one will ever need more than 640K of memory!

Not quite the same thing.  One major problem with having lots of entries in
a directory is for humans using it (who have not become significantly
faster or more capable over the recent decades.)  Having lots of entries in
a single directory is simply very unwieldy.  There are is a reason why
people invented hierarchichal files systems with directories and
sub-directories, you know.

For those situations where the directory is not intended to be looked at by
a human, but only by programs, then there are more efficient ways of storing
the data if you need that many entries. (A real database system, for
example.)


Besides, most (all?) of the situations where one might concievably want many
entries in a single directory, what one would usually want is lots of files,
not lots of sub-directories - once you start using sub-directories, you
might as well use more than a single level of them.






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Re: UFS2 limits

2008-11-09 Thread Erik Trulsson
On Sun, Nov 09, 2008 at 01:58:11PM -0500, Robert Huff wrote:
 
 Erik Trulsson writes:
 
 Question (for anyone who has an informed opinion):
 If there any technical reason that couldn't be expanded to 32
bits?  Or is it possible but not done for historical or
policy reasons, and if so what are they?
   
   It probably could be expanded to 32 bits if that was deemed
   useful.  Doing that would of course require re-creating any
   existing filesystems since the on-disk format would change, which
   would be a PITA for users, but certainly possible.
 
   I seem to remember at least one case (3.x - 4.0 ) where a
 major version change had no upgrade path - to get the new stuff you
 had to reinstall.

You are probably thinking of the 4.x - 5.x upgrade where you pretty much
had to reinstall if you wanted to switch from UFS1 to UFS2. (But you could
of course keep using UFS1 if you wanted.)

   But I agree there's no reason based on current evidence to do
 this.
   Thanks.
 
 
   Robert Huff

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Re: UFS2 limits

2008-11-09 Thread Wojciech Puchar

 the limit is 32765, just because link count is 2 bytes wide and
 each subdir adds two to base directory. you have to change to 2
 level hierarchy.


Question (for anyone who has an informed opinion):
If there any technical reason that couldn't be expanded to 32
bits?  Or is it possible but not done for historical or
policy reasons, and if so what are they?



looking at /usr/include/ufs/ufs/dinode.h - i see

int64_t di_spare[3];


and i have really no idea why time uses as much as 8+4 bytes like that:

ufs_time_t  di_mtime;   /*  40: Last modified time. */
int32_t di_mtimensec;   /*  64: Last modified time. */


i think it is not a problem to make link count 32-bit, and - why spare 
space are not just used for more direct/indirect blocks


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Re: UFS2 limits

2008-11-09 Thread Ian
On Sun, 9 Nov 2008 22:46:18 Matthew Seaman wrote:
 Jeremy Chadwick wrote:
  I don't want to change the topic of discussion, but I *highly* recommend
  you ***stop*** whatever it is you're doing that is creating such a
  directory structure.  Software which has to iterate through that
  directory using opendir() and readdir() will get slower and slower as
  time goes on.

 With the implementation of UFS_DIRHASH the practical limit on the
 size of directories is now a great deal larger. In particular
 the slow down caused by linear search through the contents has been
 eliminated.  See ffs(7).  10,000 files or sub-directories, whist
 not a particularly elegant setup, is actually not unworkable
 nowadays.

Well that's certainly been my experience so far. Still, I now know we will run 
into problems when we hit the 32,768 limit, so I'll start designing something 
better.

Cheers,
-- 
Ian
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Re: UFS2 limits

2008-11-09 Thread Jeremy Chadwick
On Sun, Nov 09, 2008 at 11:09:17AM -0500, Dan wrote:
 Jeremy Chadwick([EMAIL PROTECTED])@2008.11.08 18:40:46 -0800:
  I don't want to change the topic of discussion, but I *highly* recommend
  you ***stop*** whatever it is you're doing that is creating such a
  directory structure.  Software which has to iterate through that
  directory using opendir() and readdir() will get slower and slower as
  time goes on.
 
 On a related note there are filesystems that handle many
 files/directories very quickly. They use alternate tree data structures
 that behave quicker. ReiserFS is one of them. I believe XFS does quite
 well too. FreeBSD should have adapted XFS in addition to ZFS. ZFS is a
 resource monster. Shame, really. XFS is freely available in Linux for a
 number of years. Hammer, the new FS for FreeBSDs is available for
 DragonflyBSD.

If you really think HAMMER accomplishes the same goals as ZFS, you are
sadly mistaken.

I have no idea about XFS.

-- 
| Jeremy Chadwickjdc at parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking   http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator  Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.  PGP: 4BD6C0CB |

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Re: UFS2 limits

2008-11-09 Thread Modulok
Personally I cannot think of any situation where one would actually want
(let alone need) as many as 3 or more subdirectories in a single
directory.

No one will ever need more than 640K of memory!

Be careful.
-Modulok-
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Re: UFS2 limits

2008-11-09 Thread Wojciech Puchar

number of years. Hammer, the new FS for FreeBSDs is available for
DragonflyBSD.

i would like to see final (now still beta) version of hammer in action.
it's ADVERTISED features are great. but ZFS features was (and are) 
ADVERTISED great too while we see the result.


Hammer would be great if it will be  as advertised :)
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Re: UFS2 limits

2008-11-09 Thread dan-freebsd-questions
Erik Trulsson([EMAIL PROTECTED])@2008.11.09 20:54:14 +0100:
 Besides, for most database applications I can think of, what you would
 need are lots of *files*, which do not have any special limitations other
 than the the total space and number of i-nodes on the filesystem.
 Even if you were using the FS as a DB I can't think of any good reason
 to need 3+ subdirectories in a single directory.
 
  
  Large Maildirs for postfix and qmail/Courier. Some people don't delete
  email at all.
 
 Again, that requires lots of files, not lots of subdirectories.

I agree, I misread the OP.
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Re: UFS2 limits

2008-11-09 Thread matt donovan
On Sun, Nov 9, 2008 at 2:55 PM, Erik Trulsson [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote:

 On Sun, Nov 09, 2008 at 01:58:11PM -0500, Robert Huff wrote:
 
  Erik Trulsson writes:
 
  Question (for anyone who has an informed opinion):
  If there any technical reason that couldn't be expanded to 32
 bits?  Or is it possible but not done for historical or
 policy reasons, and if so what are they?
  
It probably could be expanded to 32 bits if that was deemed
useful.  Doing that would of course require re-creating any
existing filesystems since the on-disk format would change, which
would be a PITA for users, but certainly possible.
 
I seem to remember at least one case (3.x - 4.0 ) where a
  major version change had no upgrade path - to get the new stuff you
  had to reinstall.

 You are probably thinking of the 4.x - 5.x upgrade where you pretty much
 had to reinstall if you wanted to switch from UFS1 to UFS2. (But you could
 of course keep using UFS1 if you wanted.)

But I agree there's no reason based on current evidence to do
  this.
Thanks.
 
 
Robert Huff

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Kind of hard to get XFS in freeBSD with it being a dead filesystem that is
no longer being developed, probably to port it it would need a lot of code
changes.
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Re: UFS2 limits

2008-11-09 Thread Robert Huff

Erik Trulsson writes:

  Question (for anyone who has an informed opinion):
  If there any technical reason that couldn't be expanded to 32
   bits?  Or is it possible but not done for historical or
   policy reasons, and if so what are they?
  
  It probably could be expanded to 32 bits if that was deemed
  useful.  Doing that would of course require re-creating any
  existing filesystems since the on-disk format would change, which
  would be a PITA for users, but certainly possible.

I seem to remember at least one case (3.x - 4.0 ) where a
major version change had no upgrade path - to get the new stuff you
had to reinstall.
But I agree there's no reason based on current evidence to do
this.
Thanks.


Robert Huff


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UFS2 limits

2008-11-08 Thread no-spam
Hi,
I have a FreeBSD server that has about 10,500 subdirectories within a single
directory.
This number will keep rising and I assume UFS2 has a limit to the number of
sub-directories in a single directory - can anyone tell me what it is?

What about ZFS?

At some point I'll have to re-arrange things so that I have a deeper directory
structure, just wondering when I'll hit the limit so I can plan in advance :-)

Cheers,
Ian




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Re: UFS2 limits

2008-11-08 Thread Jeremy Chadwick
On Sun, Nov 09, 2008 at 01:40:51AM +, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Hi,
 I have a FreeBSD server that has about 10,500 subdirectories within a single
 directory.
 This number will keep rising and I assume UFS2 has a limit to the number of
 sub-directories in a single directory - can anyone tell me what it is?

As far as I know, there is no such limit on the number of files/dirs
inside of a directory.

I don't want to change the topic of discussion, but I *highly* recommend
you ***stop*** whatever it is you're doing that is creating such a
directory structure.  Software which has to iterate through that
directory using opendir() and readdir() will get slower and slower as
time goes on.

If this is something you've written or have control over or can work
with engineers in regards to, I recommend you change your directory
naming scheme to have separate subdirectories with the first 2 or 3
letters of the directory you wish to create.  E.g.:

/some/place/00/00ilikezeros/*
/some/place/01/01binaryheaven/*
/some/place/aa/aardvarks/*
/some/place/ab/abuse/*
/some/place/ac/actuary/*
...
/some/place/xy/xylophones/*

You get the point.

Traversing this structure is much more efficient, and requires very
little code change on your part.  Those who run nameservers that host
many zones, for example, use this structure to ensure the daemon doesn't
take 32498231 years to start up.

 What about ZFS?
 
 At some point I'll have to re-arrange things so that I have a deeper directory
 structure, just wondering when I'll hit the limit so I can plan in advance :-)

What baffles me is why you're looking at this problem from a  how can
the filesystem solve this engineering mistake I made for me standpoint,
rather than how can I solve this engineering mistake I made so that it
doesn't impact the filesystem.  Very strange.  Sometimes looking at
things in a different light makes all the difference.

Hope this helps.

P.S. -- I hope this mail makes it to you, because your From line is
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (I'll be surprised if your account name really is
that!).

-- 
| Jeremy Chadwickjdc at parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking   http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator  Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.  PGP: 4BD6C0CB |

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