From: Dave Kleikamp Subject: Re: Directories > 2GB Date: Wed, 04 Oct 2006 12:51:20 -0500 Message-ID: <1159984281.10427.7.camel@kleikamp.austin.ibm.com> References: <20061004165655.GD22010@schatzie.adilger.int> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org, linux-ext4@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, xfs@oss.sgi.com Return-path: To: Andreas Dilger In-Reply-To: <20061004165655.GD22010@schatzie.adilger.int> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-ext4.vger.kernel.org On Wed, 2006-10-04 at 10:56 -0600, Andreas Dilger wrote: > For ext4 we are exploring the possibility of directories being larger > than 2GB in size. For ext3/ext4 the 2GB limit is about 50M files, and > the 2-level htree limit is about 25M files (this is a kernel code and not > disk format limit). > > Amusingly (or not) some users of very large filesystems hit this limit > with their HPC batch jobs because they have 10,000 or 128,000 processes > creating files in a directory on an hourly basis (job restart files, > data dumps for visualization, etc) and it is not always easy to change > the apps. > > My question (esp. for XFS folks) is if anyone has looked at this problem > before, and what kind of problems they might have hit in userspace and in > the kernel due to "large" directory sizes (i.e. > 2GB). It appears at > first glance that 64-bit systems will do OK because off_t is a long > (for telldir output), but that 32-bit systems would need to use O_LARGEFILE > when opening the file in order to be able to read the full directory > contents. It might also be possible to return -EFBIG only in the case > that telldir is used beyond 2GB (the LFS spec doesn't really talk about > large directories at all). ext3 directory entries are always multiples of 4 bytes in length. So the lowest 2 bits of the offset are always zero. Right? Why not shift the returned offset and f_pos 2 bits right? JFS uses an index into an array for the position (which isn't even in the directory traversal order) so it can handle about 2G files in a directory (although deleted entries aren't reused). -- David Kleikamp IBM Linux Technology Center