Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2000 22:11:12 -0500 From: "Josh Paetzel" <jpaetzel@hutchtel.net> To: "Eric J. Schwertfeger" <ejs@bfd.com> Cc: <questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: any faster way to rm -rf huge directory? Message-ID: <000b01bfed41$2ae2d870$927009ce@hacker> References: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0007131356240.65575-100000@harlie.bfd.com>
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----- Original Message ----- From: "Eric J. Schwertfeger" <ejs@bfd.com> To: <questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Sent: Thursday, July 13, 2000 4:08 PM Subject: any faster way to rm -rf huge directory? > > Thanks to a programmer-induced glitch in a data-pushing perl script, we > are the proud owners of a directory with (currently) a quarter million > files in it. The directory is on a vinum partition striped across three > seagate baracudas, with soft-updates being used. > > I did "rm -rf <dirname>" to clean up the directory, and that was > Monday. At the current rate of deletions (just under 10/minute), it's > going to be a week or two before it gets done, as it should get faster > once the directory gets smaller. > > I understand at a technical level why it is going so slow, so I'm not > complaining (I'm the one that insists that any directory with over 10,000 > files be split up). My question is, short of backing up the rest of the > disk, newfs, and restore (not an option, this is the main partition of a > live server), is there a faster way to do this? Not a critical issue, as > we have plenty of room, and despite the fact that all the drive lights are > flickering madly nonstop, the system's performance isn't off too much, > so it's more a matter of curiosity. > > I have a friend who I showed this to who made the following comment.... "Two weeks? There must be something wrong. Once softupdates are compiled into the kernel you have to use #tunefs -n enable on the unmounted filesystem to activate it. This only has to be done once." I pass this along just in the hope that it would help...I know nothing about the issue myself. Josh > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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