Bugzilla – Bug 133429
EXT3: Enable dir_index feature
Last modified: 2006-06-20 11:56:57 UTC
ext3 has a feature called 'dir_index' which enables faster lookups in large filesystems by using a technique called hashed b-trees. Currently a user which wants to use this feature has to manually convert the filesystem by using 'tune2fs -O dir_index <device>' and 'fsck.ext3 -fD <device>' which takes a long time to complete on large filesystems. This feature can also be enabled by using 'mkfs.ext3 -O dir_index <device>' at filesystem creation time. The YAST2 installer doesn't offer an option for this. My suggestion is to add an option to the YAST2 installer to enable the dir_index feature at filesystem creation time. I've tested this option on three different system and noticed some speedups especially on slower systems (my notebook).
Thomas: Has it a special reason that this feature cannot be enabled that way? I also took Chris into CC, maby he wants to provide a comment here.
dir_index is generally considered stable. It would be a good feature to add to yast.
New features are for PM to decide.
Added as feature to our feature database, this will now get evaluated for SUSE Linux 10.2. I mark it as solved since it's tracked elsewhere.
FYI: The latest e2fsprogs (1.39) enables this functionality by default. -- Mke2fs will now create filesystems hash trees and on-line resizing enabled by default, based on the new /etc/mke2fs.conf file. -- http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?group_id=2406&release_id=420906