On Thu, 2005-02-10 at 11:21 -0800, David Busby wrote: > I don't want this to turn into one of those ext3 vs xfs conversations. > > I want to know which filesystem is a better choice for having lots > (>4billion) directories. The dirs will be in tree format, so at the > root will be 256 dirs, each with 256 sub-dirs, each with 256 sub-dirs. > This will go on for 8 to 12 levels deep (I don't know yet) Then each > dir will have one small file in it (<32bytes). How would I tune ext3 > for this? What about XFS, I read that some of it's features might be > useful to me for this project. Any good links? I don't even know what > phrases to Google for this one, my results have been unhelpful. > > /djb
You're working with exclusively small files, therefore I'm going to strongly recommend neither. I'm going to recommend reiserfs3.6 (NOT 4 yet. Not saying 4 is bad, it's young). Still though I'll hit on ext3 and xfs. Ext3 is a great fileystem. However, reiserfs3.6 will blow it away in small file performance. In fact, reiserfs3.6 will blow away any filesystem in that regard; this is it's strongest point. XFS is also a great filesystem. However it is aimed at handling very large files, which you obviously don't have. XFS was also designed for systems with good power backups. XFS caches VERY agressively in ram (it's common to have 100's of MB of data cached), therefore if you lose power, you're going to have some major problems. I recommend reiserfs 3.6. I realise that wasn't one of your choices presented here, but this stands. -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
