nmh-workers
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: [Nmh-workers] Large MH directories

2017-04-08 11:06:05
Ken Hornstein <kenh(_at_)pobox(_dot_)com> writes:
Is this a bad idea? I'm mainly concerned about speed: Other than like
pick and scan on the whole folder, will anything else get very slow? I'm
using Fast File System on OpenBSD.

We've been asked about this before; unfortunately, with the current (n)mh
design, it's just going to suck.

A bit of an explanation: right now, pretty much every nmh program that
wants to interpret a folder calls folder_read(). folder_read() does
a readdir() on the ENTIRE folder.  It does NOT do a stat() on every
file, but if you have 600k files in a single directory, that's just
going to take some time.

FWIW, I have not noticed any real performance problems with folder sizes
in the range of 10K-50K messages.  I try to keep my folders under 100K,
not because performance falls off a cliff but because I begrudge the extra
space for the message number in scan listings.

It may or may not matter that I use exmh not direct nmh commands.
exmh seems to cache the scan output, but then again it adds a lot of
its own overhead.

                        regards, tom lane

_______________________________________________
Nmh-workers mailing list
Nmh-workers(_at_)nongnu(_dot_)org
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>