[Gllug] large but emtpy directories

[Richard Jones]

On Thu, Sep 07, 2006 at 11:09:59AM +0100, Alain Williams wrote:
> A client's machine has got some large directories [6MB] (exim spool directories),
> they now don't contain a large number of files any more (issue that caused
> the large queues has gone away). It is on an ext3 file system.
> 
> Would it be worth finding a quiet time and take exim down for a couple of minutes
> to recreate the directories -- ie make them smaller again ? I think that this might
> make searching the directories quicker. Would I be wasting my time ?

I would definitely test first whether searching/modifying these
directories is a problem at the moment.  A simple 'time /bin/ls
--sort=none' or 'time touch foo' should tell you.

On a machine I used to look after several years ago (it had ext3 mail
spools) occasionally a spammer would manage to fill up a directory
with x 000,000's files and it would take literally minutes to just
list the contents.  However after removing the files I don't recall
having to take any special steps to recreate the directories
themselves.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, CTO Merjis Ltd.
Merjis - web marketing and technology - http://merjis.com
Team Notepad - intranets and extranets for business - http://team-notepad.com
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