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The Graveyard - Products No Longer Supported => D-Link Storage => DNS-323 => Topic started by: ivan on May 13, 2011, 03:01:17 AM

Title: Total number of files in a directory
Post by: ivan on May 13, 2011, 03:01:17 AM

I think I might have struck a boundary which is very annoying.  I have one directory on the nas that I use to store odd snippets of information - mainly text files and jpegs.  Yesterday I tried to add a couple more but nothing happened.  Using FTP just gave an error message.  I am able to add files to all the other directories on the nas with out problems.  I have 3820 files in that dir - if I delete one I can add one.  Is this a built in limit to either the file system or the firmware?

Title: Re: Total number of files in a directory
Post by: dosborne on May 13, 2011, 01:21:47 PM

Ext2 and Ext3 limits are significantly larger than that (by a factor of 10 at least). Did you experience this just with FTP or also with samba share access?

4000 "snippets" LOL Must be a nightmare to find anything. Have you considered organising it with a few sub-directories?

Title: Re: Total number of files in a directory
Post by: ivan on May 13, 2011, 02:13:18 PM

Thanks dosborne, that is what I thought - after all what good a file system if you can only store such a small number of files in one directory.

I've tried with FTP, SAMBA and NFS with the same results - I can't get more than 3820 files in that directory yet I can add to a sub-directory in that directory.

It's not so much of a problem to find what I want when I want it - the software does that for me and there is one sub-directory created by the project software which, as I said, I can still add to.

The stupid thing with this is that the 320 I use to back up the 323 has no problems with adding to the same named directory.

Title: Re: Total number of files in a directory
Post by: D-Link Multimedia on May 13, 2011, 02:22:39 PM

I'll take a look into it and try to reproduce here early next week.

Title: Re: Total number of files in a directory
Post by: ivan on May 13, 2011, 03:55:52 PM

Thanks D-Link,
It's a C1 box with 1.08 FW if that's any help.

If I wasn't near the end of this project I'd try shifting to another directory just to see what happens but I'm not going to tempt fate at this stage.

Title: Re: Total number of files in a directory
Post by: scaramanga on May 14, 2011, 04:31:07 AM

See ext2 limits: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ext2#File_system_limits
That's, probably, not it.

Title: Re: Total number of files in a directory
Post by: ivan on June 03, 2011, 04:06:09 AM

OK project finished and the files zipped up.

I've now had a chance to look at this in more depth.  We are using OS/2 here which can attach EAs to files - Ext2 has a limit on the size of EAs it can handle which is far under the size OS/2 can and will produce, especially thumbnails of pics.

It appears this was causing the problem - as a test I stripped the EAs from the files and managed to load 6000 without problems.

Thanks to those that offered help - our knowledge is advanced one more step.