[CentOS] too many links error when creating directories

[Stephen Harris]

On Fri, Sep 28, 2007 at 01:38:42PM +0800, chitgoks wrote:
> john yeah. a few images per directory (for now, maybe in the future more
> images). the directory name would point to the username.
> 
> robert, thanks. now im sure that the limit is 32k since you confirmed it as
> well. ive read in other posts regarding this.

It is 32,000 entries.  As others have said, it's to do with the number of
hard links an object can have, and making a directory results in an extra
link to the current directory.

(Note: you're not limitted in number of files in this way, merely
subdirectories)

Personally, I feel that having 32,000 entries is a bad idea.  Especially if
all those dierctories will be owned by a different person!  Just do an
"ls -l" and it will result in 32,000 lookups for each different username.

If you want to maintain a consistent structure like this then you can
do what someone else suggested (split by first letter, for example)
and if you _want_ to just say /home/user then you can create a symlink
tree /home/user -> /realdisk/u/user

-- 

rgds
Stephen