Ext3 files per directory limit

The error talks about 32 bits. Are your running a 32 bit installation? If it shows it is 32 bit then you might be able to expand you install the 64 bit version assuming your underlying RHEL is not 32 bit itself.

However, the discussion makes it clear that only 16TiB is supported on ext4 and sizes above that are "theorectical" but not "tested". Alternatively you could determine if you really need a single filesystem. We break up large Oracle databases onto multiple ext4 filesystems rather than putting them all in one.

I am running 64bit edition. When I try to resize the filesystem beyond 16TB getting the error. Thanks for keeping this document updated. I last looked at it in and was happy to see it was updated at the end of Note on the ext3 comments posted in ext3 was better than ext2 but with the advent of ext4 we found that converting filesystems from ext3 to ext4 made many operations quite a bit faster for large filesystems.. For large filesystems we had turned off automatic fsck because this could be excruciatingly slow booting a server relying on ext3.

For ext4 even when running a "full" fsck it is much faster and allowed us to re-enable automatic check parameters.

I cannot create a 20TB file system in Ext4 or Ext3. Is it possible to use Ext3 for a very large file system 16 TB and above? If not, which file system is recommended for very large file systems? What is the maximum file size supported within a file system? It can take a few seconds for ls to complete. One way of doing so is to use the first couple characters of the file name as a directory. The git source control system takes this approach. See Why does git store objects in directories with the first two characters of the hash?

Git limits the number of hash revisions per directory to Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams?

Learn more. What is a recommended maximum number of files in a directory on your webserver? Ask Question. Asked 5 years, 3 months ago. Active 5 years, 3 months ago. Viewed 18k times. Improve this question. Louisa Louisa 1 1 gold badge 1 1 silver badge 3 3 bronze badges. For example, ext3 can have many thousands of files; but after a couple of thousands, it used to be very slow.

Mostly when listing a directory, but also when opening a single file. A few years ago, it gained the 'htree' option, that dramatically shortened the time needed to get an inode given a filename.

Personally, I use subdirectories to keep most levels under a thousand or so items. In your case, I'd create directories, with the two last hex digits of the ID. Use the last and not the first digits, so you get the load balanced. If the time involved in implementing a directory partitioning scheme is minimal, I am in favor of it.

The first time you have to debug a problem that involves manipulating a file directory via the console you will understand. This also makes the files more easily browsable from a third party application.

Never assume that your software is the only thing that will be accessing your software's files. It absolutely depends on the filesystem. Many modern filesystems use decent data structures to store the contents of directories, but older filesystems often just added the entries to a list, so retrieving a file was an O n operation. There isn't a per-directory "max number" of files, but a per-directory "max number of blocks used to store file entries". Specifically, the size of the directory itself can't grow beyond a b-tree of height 3, and the fanout of the tree depends on the block size.

See this link for some details. In my case, a directory with a mere , files was unable to be copied to the destination. Under Windows, any directory with more than 2k files tends to open slowly for me in Explorer. If they're all image files, more than 1k tend to open very slowly in thumbnail view. At one time, the system-imposed limit was 32, It's higher now, but even that is way too many files to handle at one time under most circumstances. What most of the answers above fail to show is that there is no "One Size Fits All" answer to the original question.

In today's environment we have a large conglomerate of different hardware and software -- some is 32 bit, some is 64 bit, some is cutting edge and some is tried and true - reliable and never changing. Added to that is a variety of older and newer hardware, older and newer OSes, different vendors Windows, Unixes, Apple, etc. As hardware has improved and software is converted to 64 bit compatibility, there has necessarily been considerable delay in getting all the pieces of this very large and complex world to play nicely with the rapid pace of changes.

IMHO there is no one way to fix a problem. The solution is to research the possibilities and then by trial and error find what works best for your particular needs.

Each user must determine what works for their system rather than using a cookie cutter approach. I for example have a media server with a few very large files. The result is only about files filling a 3 TB drive. Someone else, with a lot of smaller files may run out of inodes before they come near to filling the space.

While theoretically the total number of files that may be contained within a directory is nearly infinite, practicality determines that the overall usage determine realistic units, not just filesystem capabilities. I hope that all the different answers above have promoted thought and problem solving rather than presenting an insurmountable barrier to progress. Of course. Filesystems like EXT3 can be very slow. Solution I prefer the same way as armandino.

Finally you should think about how to reduce the amount of files in total. Depending on your target you can use CSS sprites to combine multiple tiny images like avatars, icons, smilies, etc. In my case I had thousands of mini-caches and finally I decided to combine them in packs of I ran into a similar issue.

I was trying to access a directory with over 10, files in it. It was taking too long to build the file list and run any type of commands on any of the files. I thought up a little php script to do this for myself and tried to figure a way to prevent it from time out in the browser. I recall running a program that was creating a huge amount of files at the output. The files were sorted at per directory. I do not recall having any read problems when I had to reuse the produced output. It was on an bit Ubuntu Linux laptop, and even Nautilus displayed the directory contents, albeit after a few seconds.

I respect this doesn't totally answer your question as to how many is too many, but an idea for solving the long term problem is that in addition to storing the original file metadata, also store which folder on disk it is stored in - normalize out that piece of metadata. Once a folder grows beyond some limit you are comfortable with for performance, aesthetic or whatever reason, you just create a second folder and start dropping files there Select a more suitable FS file system.

Since from a historic point of view, all your issues were wise enough, to be once central to FSs evolving over decades. I mean more modern FS better support your issues. First make a comparison decision table based on your ultimate purpose from FS list. I think its time to shift your paradigms. So I personally suggest using a distributed system aware FS , which means no limits at all regarding size, number of files and etc. Ask Question.

Asked 11 years, 9 months ago. Active 9 years, 3 months ago. Viewed 23k times. Improve this question. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. I have done a change like this for another client, and it made a huge difference. Sean Reifschneider Sean Reifschneider 10k 3 3 gold badges 23 23 silver badges 28 28 bronze badges. David Gelhar David Gelhar 1 1 silver badge 2 2 bronze badges. Amy B Amy B 6 6 bronze badges. And how many files do you get per hour? Sam Rodgers Sam Rodgers 81 2 2 bronze badges.

Eric Seppanen Eric Seppanen 1 1 bronze badge. Sign up or log in Sign up using Google. Sign up using Facebook. Sign up using Email and Password. Post as a guest Name. Email Required, but never shown.