Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!auspex!guy
From: guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: ls -l
Message-ID: <2699@auspex.auspex.com>
Date: 8 Dec 89 18:44:41 GMT
References: <21519@adm.BRL.MIL> <1989Dec1.093729.20250@dlcq15.datlog.co.uk>
Reply-To: guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris)
Organization: Auspex Systems, Santa Clara
Lines: 20


 >> What could be the possible reasons that cause ls -l
 >> to be slow, i.e. one line at a time at 1 sec interval?
 >
 >On AIX (spit!) I've found that this happens when the user and/or group IDs
 >don't exist in the password and/or group files.  With lots of entries in
 >the password file it takes a looooooong time to not find a name.

...

 >This may (or may not) occur on other systems, I've not noticed it on Ultrix
 >or Xenix, but I could have just been lucky :-).

It depends on how your system accesses the password database, and how
big "/etc/passwd" is if your system accesses the password database
by scanning it linearly.  If your system has a small password file, or
it uses a 4.3BSD-style "(n)dbm" database built from it, or it has some
network server (e.g., Yellow Pages, Apollo Registry, Hesiod), it may not
be so slow since either 1) the linear search is quick or 2) the linear
search isn't necessary.