On Wed, Oct 04, 2006 at 06:43:22PM -0600, Andreas Dilger wrote: > On Oct 04, 2006 16:33 -0500, Matt Dodson wrote: > > I have an ext3 filesystem that has several directories and each > > directory gets a large number of files inserted and then deleted over > > time. The filesystem is basically used as a temp store before files are > > processed. The issue is over time the directory scans get extremely slow > > even if the directories are empty. I have noticed the directories can > > range in size from 4k - 100M even when they are empty. Is there a way > > to fix this without recreating the directories or bringing the > > filesystem offline? > > No way to fix this w/o offline e2fsck -fD. ext3 doesn't shrink directories > when deleting files. Well, if there isn't anyone else using the directory, you can also do the following: mkdir foo.new mv foo/* foo.new rmdir foo mv foo.new foo And of course, if you know the directory is empty, just do: rmdir foo mkdir foo Historically this is a pretty common restriction in Unix filesystems. If someone cared enough, it would be possible to change ext3/4 to release directory blocks when they are empty, but no one has found it important enough to create such a patch. - Ted _______________________________________________ Ext3-users mailing list Ext3-users@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/ext3-users
