Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!zephyr.ens.tek.com!tektronix!sequent!ccssrv!perry
From: perry@ccssrv.UUCP (Perry Hutchison)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Cnews wish
Message-ID: <638@ccssrv.UUCP>
Date: 19 Sep 89 19:01:37 GMT
References: <1989Sep14.182604.15992@helios.physics.utoronto.ca> <321@sci34hub.UUCP>
Reply-To: perry@ccssrv.UUCP (Perry Hutchison)
Organization: Control-C Software, Inc., Beaverton, OR
Lines: 11

In article <321@sci34hub.UUCP> gary@sci34hub.UUCP (Gary Heston) writes:

>directory entries ... stretched out over 50,000+ inodes, which KILLED
>performance ... the only way to cure it was to dump everything to tape,
>recreate the directory, and restore.

Another approach:  create a new tree in which each directory is new but
each leaf is a link to the existing file.  Then rm -rf the old tree, and
rename the new one.  Should be faster since only directories get messed
with and the data doesn't have to be dumped and restored.  (If you're
short on i-nodes, this might have to be done in parts.)