>> I have a backup server that contains 10 ext3 file systems each with 12 >> million files scattered randomly over 4000 directories. The files >> average > > OK 4000 directories for 12million files means you've got 3000 files per > directory. If you are doing that make sure your fs has htree enabled. The > initial find is still going to suck especially if on spinning media and > doubly (actually far more than doubly) if the disk is also busy trying to > do other work. dir_index is enabled as is noatime. I'm not sure but I believe the noatime was supposed to speed things up a little also. >> size is 1MB. Every day I expect to get 20 or so requests for files from >> this archive. The files were not stored in any logical structure that I >> can use to narrow down the search. This will be different moving >> forward >> but it does not help me for the old data. Additionally, every day data >> is >> added and old data is removed to make space. > > What are you searching by - name or content ? > > If you are searching by content then you really want to stuff the lot > into a freetext engine like Omega. If you are searching by file name I'd > take the time to turn the archive upside down and archive that way up > assuming your tools can do it. > > That is turn all the files backwards so > > foo/bar/hello.c > > becomes > > hello.c/bar/foo > > or build a symlink farm of them that way up (so hello.c/bar/foo is a > symlink to foo/bar/hello.c) > > Its then suddenely a lot lot less painful to find things ! A database > would also no doubt do the job I am searching by name only. I am a little unclear about this. The idea here is to create a symlink for each file in the root of the filesystem? That won't hurt something? --- Will Y. -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. -- users mailing list users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines