If I put 30-40,000 files in one directory (to avoid the overhead of putting and getting from some container) and do 'ls', or 'ls -1', then my new Mandrake 6.0 machine (with plenty of memory and disk) gets busy 98% busy for 10-15 minutes and then returns the expected output. Same with other utilities, f.eks. tar'ing these many files starts out being fast, then gradually slows to 10-20% of the speed when it starts; I dont believe swapping is the cause, as I got 800 mb of ram. On the other hand, I can write a simple Perl script (below) that does the same as 'ls -1' but in 1 second. Also, it seems slower to copy a file into a directory with many files than into one with few. Is this well a known thing? I have guesses to why, but that would be pure speculation; do anyone know? Another observation .. I was in the middle of editing /etc/fstab with Emacs when guy downstairs presses the power button, forgetting to see if someone works on it, also forgetting to shut down right. Then, he couldnt boot the machine. We were asked during the boot to fix file system errors, ran fsck and pressed y a few times (what else can one do?) and try again. Still no boot, because now /etc/fstab was gone. I have not tried to reproduce this (pulling the plug while editing a file isnt fun), and I have not yet applied the Mandrake updates (kernel and initscripts). Again, has this been seen by others? Niels Larsen, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
