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I have an ext2 filesystem with a maximum number of inodes per directory (somewhere around 32k), and also a maximum number of inodes in the entire filesystem (somewhere around 350m). Because I'm using this filesystem as a datastore for a service that has in excess of 32k objects, I'm distributing those objects between multiple subdirectories (like a dictionary separates A-K and L-Z).

My question is this:

Is there any significance to the tree depth when I'm building these inodes? Is there a significant difference or limitation that's going to affect my service if I choose "/usr/www/service/data/a_k/aardvark" over "/data/a_k/aardvark"?

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  • Oh, my! There are still ext2 in the wild?!!! Can I touch it? I think it would be better for you to switch to ext3 or ext4 because of dir_index capability.
    – Mircea Vutcovici
    Jan 11, 2011 at 5:54

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There shouldn't be any measurable difference unless you have a really memory starved system. The OS will cache the /usr/www/service/data/ directory inode and do searches from there, not go over whole hierarchy each time a file is accessed.

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