A passer-by's mumble. We are discussing about systems with huge "struct dentry" instances where selecting a hash list based on "struct qstr"->hash cannot effectively narrow down candidates to compare, aren't we? Then, I thought we can reconstruct candidates in a hash list. For example, sort "struct dentry" based on return value of strcmp(dentry1->d_name.name, dentry2->d_name.name). For another example, embed another hash value (calculated using some algorithm that is different from the one used for "struct qstr"->hash) into the leading 1 or 2 or 4 bytes of "struct dentry"->d_name.name (e.g. dentry1->d_name.name == { 0x12, 0x56, 0x34, 0x78, 'n', 'a', 'm', 'e', '1' } dentry2->d_name.name == { 0xab, 0xcd, 0xef, 0x01, 'n', 'a', 'm', 'e', '2' } for 32 bits hash case, where 0x12563478 is hash value for name1 and 0xabcdef01 is hash value for name2) and compare the embedded hash (e.g. * (u32 *) dentry1->d_name.name == * (u32 *) dentry2->d_name.name ) before starting comparison of char array (e.g. memcmp(dentry1->d_name.name + 4, dentry2->d_name.name + 4, len) ). -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-fsdevel" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html