Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!mit-eddie!rutgers!att!chinet!randy
From: randy@chinet.chi.il.us (Randy Suess)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: ls -l
Message-ID: <1989Dec8.164200.7984@chinet.chi.il.us>
Date: 8 Dec 89 16:42:00 GMT
References: <21519@adm.BRL.MIL> <1989Dec1.093729.20250@dlcq15.datlog.co.uk>
Reply-To: randy@chinet.chi.il.us (Randy Suess)
Organization: Chinet - Chicago Public Access UNIX
Lines: 17

In article <1989Dec1.093729.20250@dlcq15.datlog.co.uk> scm@dlcq15.datlog.co.uk (Steve Mawer) writes:
]In article <21519@adm.BRL.MIL> SIMSN%NUSDISCS.BITNET@cunyvm.cuny.edu writes:
]> 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.

	Another possibility is that you have a large /etc/passwd file.
	ls -l looks up the name and group for the actual uid and
	gid.  This gets real slow.  To find out if this is the case,
	use ls -n.  This will just print out the numeric uid/gid without
	the passwd lookup.  It should be a lot faster if this is the problem.
-randy
-- 
Randy Suess
randy@chinet.chi.il.us