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Date:      Sun, 17 Feb 2002 17:21:42 +0100 (MET)
From:      Thomas Schuerger <schuerge@wjpserver.CS.Uni-SB.DE>
To:        Bill Moran <wmoran@potentialtech.com>
Cc:        freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: New dir layout structure slow on full disks?
Message-ID:  <200202171621.g1HGLgl27185@wjpserver.cs.uni-sb.de>
In-Reply-To: <3C6FD5F7.7060702@potentialtech.com> from Bill Moran at "Feb 17, 2002 11:10:31 am"

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> > Hi!
> > 
> > I'm using 4.5-RELEASE and am quite happy with the new directory layout
> > stuff. It really speeds up file scans etc. a lot.
> > 
> > But there can be serious performance loss:
> > 
> > When a disk is nearly full (e.g. 98%, but still 1,6 GB free, values
> > taken from "df"), creating files becomes very slow. I noticed this
> > when I wanted to install a big port (e.g. kdebase2). The extraction of
> > the .tar.gz archive took really long and made my system more or less
> > unusable. tar took something like 90-99% system time for 3 minutes.
> 
> Err ... have you compared this to performance on a filesystem that's
> close to full with the old dirpref code?  I'm gussing it would be
> similarly slow.
> 
> ffs doesn't run well with close-to-full drives, it was never intended
> to.  I believe both the man pages for newfs and tunefs state that
> performance drops exponentially on a filesystem as it passes the
> 92% capacity mark.  That's why, under normal conditions, only root
> can fill it beyond that mark.
> 
> When you say 98% full, do you mean 98% of the 92%, or do you mean
> 98% of the total fs capacity?
> 
> If the former is the case, then you really do have an issue that
> needs looked at.  If the latter is the case, then you are simply
> reiterating a known limitation of ffs that's been there since (I
> believe) BSD 4.2.

I mean the user-visible percentage (that's why I said "values taken
from df"). I didn't compare it to the performance of the old dirpref
code, but I have never noticed anything similar before 4.5-RELEASE
even if the disks where even more full (df-capacity >100%).

When I deleted some files on the disk (from 98% to 96% capacity), creating
files seemed fine again as ever.


Greetings,
Thomas.

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