From owner-freebsd-hackers  Sat Aug 16 05:26:22 1997
Return-Path: <owner-freebsd-hackers>
Received: (from root@localhost)
          by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id FAA21257
          for hackers-outgoing; Sat, 16 Aug 1997 05:26:22 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from ocean.campus.luth.se (ocean.campus.luth.se [130.240.194.116])
          by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id FAA21252
          for <hackers@FreeBSD.ORG>; Sat, 16 Aug 1997 05:26:19 -0700 (PDT)
Received: (from karpen@localhost)
	by ocean.campus.luth.se (8.8.5/8.8.5) id OAA01231;
	Sat, 16 Aug 1997 14:29:10 +0200 (CEST)
From: Mikael Karpberg <karpen@ocean.campus.luth.se>
Message-Id: <199708161229.OAA01231@ocean.campus.luth.se>
Subject: Re: More info on slow "rm" times with 2.2.1+.
In-Reply-To: <199708161207.FAA26252@implode.root.com> from David Greenman at "Aug 16, 97 05:07:22 am"
To: dg@root.com
Date: Sat, 16 Aug 1997 14:29:10 +0200 (CEST)
Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL31H (25)]
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
X-Loop: FreeBSD.org
Precedence: bulk

According to David Greenman:
[...]
> > It would be trivial for me to verify any slow or fast times - all
> >I've got to do is make a big directory... seems that ~300 files is
> >enough to run into whatever the problem may be...
> 
>    How many files are in the directory isn't important. What is important is
> the size of the directory. You can have a 20MB directory and yet have only a
> 100 files in it. There is code to free up unused space in directories, but
> it only works if the free space is at the end. If the directory is large,
> then it will take a large amount of time to search through it.

And this cuz it's slow? Or? Isn't there a command (which could be run in
daily, or weekly, or something) that goes through a directory (or many) and
optimize the space they take?

If there isn't... why? And would it be hard to write?

  /Mikael