Folders - Are there limits?

[Uniden]

I am using FreeBSD 6.3 and I am wondering if there are any limits (NOT counting physical limitations of the hard drives) as to the amount of the folders that can be created.

I am working on an application that has the potential of creating tens of thousands of folders and I would like to know where the "ceiling" is..

 

[SirDice]

AFAIK there are no limits. You may run out of inodes though.

 

[DutchDaemon]

http://serverfault.com/questions/53416/max-total-files-in-a-directory-in-freebsd-6-ufs

If you code the app yourself, consider using a hash-type subdirectory mechanism (/a/a/a, /a/a/b) to avoid searches in immense directories. There's also a kernel option to mitigate performance loss due to huge directories (UFS_DIRHASH).

 

[Zare]

For the n-th time...

Folders are GUI concepts that abstract data storage structures, mainly directories.
For instance, "Mail folder" can store raw e-mail data in separate files, master file, database table, etc, in the back-end.

Therefore, there aren't any folders in FreeBSD filesystem, those are directories.

I just love when yuppie companies (Microsoft / Apple) distort terms and coin new ones.

 

[DutchDaemon]

BTW, note that the number of subdirectories per directory appears to be limited to 32K, as the information on that URL suggests, whereas the number of files is virtually unlimited (inside system limit parameters).

 

[Uniden]

Thank you all!

Yes, of course I meant "directories". While also being a Windows user, I am using that vocabulary when I refer to UNIX stuff ..at least as often as I type "ls -al" in a Windows command prompt window.

As for the choices I now have after looking at the DutchDaemon's link, it appears that creating a DIRECTORY with 40,000 files is better (in terms of inodes) than creating 10,000 directories with 4 files each. This way I do not need to worry about the 32K limit. BTW, the file count in each dir created by my app is always 4.

Again, thanks!

 

[phoenix]

"folders" are the same as "directories". They are synonyms.

 

[gordon@]

Zare, your pedantic reply only serves to alienate people. We are all new at some point.

Dutch, UFS_DIRHASH has been a default for quite a while (a couple of years I believe?)

It is still advisable to come up with a system to avoid putting tons of files in a single directory. Even with dirhash, it'll suck when it comes to performance.

 

[DutchDaemon]

Dutch, UFS_DIRHASH has been a default for quite a while (a couple of years I believe?)

Sure, it's been in GENERIC for quite some time. Haven't used GENERIC in years myself though and I'm sure there are others who routinely remove options like that.