*BSD News Article 61908


Return to BSD News archive

Newsgroups: news.software.nntp,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.mel.connect.com.au!munnari.OZ.AU!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in2.uu.net!twwells!bill
From: bill@twwells.com (T. William Wells)
Subject: Re: Poor performance with INN and FreeBSD.
Followup-To: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Organization: None, Mt. Laurel, NJ
Message-ID: <Dn5zv3.CnC@twwells.com>
References: <311F8C62.4BC4@pluto.njcc.com> <DMu8B6.6Jn@twwells.com> <4gdgc6$ron@olivea.ATC.Olivetti.Com> <4gf2p0$209@fozzie.sun3.iaf.nl>
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 06:40:14 GMT
Lines: 23
Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au news.software.nntp:20074 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:14157

In article <4gf2p0$209@fozzie.sun3.iaf.nl>,
Geert Bosch <geert@fozzie.sun3.iaf.nl> wrote:
: Is it *really* true that FreeBSD still uses a file-system with linear
: directories?

Yes, it uses a linear directory.

: For these kind of things B-tree's (or similar structures)
: are *far* more efficient.

And a whole lot more *fragile*. Remember, that a file system
needs to be stable under such outrages as pulling the plug and bad
disk blocks; it should also have a hope of surviving things like
buffering disk controllers that defeat the purpose of synchronous
writes....

Not to mention that for many purposes, the efficiency improvement
of more complex directory structures is negligible or even
negative -- the cost of dicking with the structure can outweigh
the order-of-magnitude improvement.

I've set followups to comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc only as this is
no longer relevant to the nntp group.