Arch Linux

T-Dawg

Forum Fellow

From: Charlotte, NC

Registered: 2005-01-29

Posts: 2,736

To dir_index or not to dir_index

I've always had this option enabled so I don't have anything to compare to.
I was recently wondering why it is not enabled by default if it does as it says and speeds up larger files by indexing. I did some googleling and found a few people asking this same question but with no responses. One person even reported faster write times but significantly slower read times with dir_index enabled versus disabled. I also found that some distributions such as Fedora and...um can't remember enable it by default.

So my question is this: what are your experiences with dir_index enabled versus disabled by default? Does anyone have any insight as to any potential problems with it?

There must be a reason why it is not enabled by default...

codemac

Member

From: Cliche Tech Place

Registered: 2005-05-13

Posts: 794

Website

Re: To dir_index or not to dir_index

dir_index keeps an index of files.  Thus it takes up disk space

Remember that ext3 is supposedly backward compatible with ext2 file systems.  Any tool that worked with ext2 is supposed to work with ext3.  My understanding is that ext3 enables only the minimal extensions, as to not do more than you expect.

this is all speculation

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http://codemac.net