filesystem performance with lots of small files

[Andre Oppermann]

Marian Hettwer wrote:
> Hi there,
> 
> I'm actually testing around with FreeBSD 6 BETA 3. Regarding stability 
> I'm really pleased, it runs and runs and runs :)
> No problems on that front.
> Back to the topic. I have a directory with several thousands (800k and 
> more) small files. UFS2 shows a pretty low performance. I don't have 
> numbers yet, but I'd like to know in advance wether there are tunable 
> parameters. I couldn't find any sysctl'´s or kernel parameters.
> I'll report numbers, as soon as I have them.
> And yes, I disabled the debugging features in my kernel (WITNESS, 
> INVARIANTS ...)
> Besides, I know that 6-BETA is not about performance at all :)
> 
> any tips on file system performance with small files, though ?

What is low performance for you?  Is it creating a new file, opening
an existing file, reading from a file, etc?  What is your point of
reference you compare to (FreeBSD 4.11, etc)?

-- 
Andre