[KLUG Members] Samba share with lots of files

[Adam Tauno Williams]

>>I moved a directory from a 98 host to a samba share.  It is a
>>directory that has 26050 files and is 889MB in size.  It is a collection 
>>of scanned images.  The filesystem is ext2.  The issue I would like to 
>>solve is that it takes about 45 seconds for the list of files to appear 
>>in nethood when seeking the list of files.  Is there a way to reduce this
>>time without sectioning off these files onto other directories?  Would

Create a FAT32 or Minix filesystem to store these files in.

Create a RAMdisk full of sym-links (don't laugh, I've done this)

ext2 is horribly slow on large directories.  ext3 doesn't help.

>>this be improved if I used reisrfs?  Is it that the filesystem needs to have
>>the filesstored sorted in the correct order?  This is frustrating because 
>>when the application being used accesses the files on it's own fat32 hard
>>drive it takes only a couple of seconds.  I would much prefer to keep these
>>files on the samba server if I could get better performance getting the list
>>of files on the directory. 
>ReiserFS handles large quantities of files in a directory much better
>than ext2.

True, XFS is better as well.

>Although I've never tried a ReiserFS partition with Samba, I don't
>know why it wouldn't work.  I don't think it should suffer the same
>problems that ReiserFS has with NFS (at least I never heard of such a thing).

I've used Reiserfs in production on Squid boxes for along time.   It is stable
enough for that.

Systems and Network Administrator
Morrison Industries
1825 Monroe Ave NW
Grand Rapids, MI. 49505