[CentOS] OT? File order on CentOS/Samba server

[Miguel Medalha]

> You don't necessarily have to wait to see what the Distiller would do.
> "ls -U" shows the files unsorted, in the directory order, that is
> probably the order in which the Distiller is using them.
>
>   
Yes, Distiller uses the directory order. I made an experience at home. I 
copied 10 files by hand, one by one, from Windows to a CentOS machine.

Copy order
------------
F08C.ps
F06C.ps
F03C.ps
F05C.ps
F10C.ps
F02C.ps
F07C.ps
F04C.ps
F01C.ps
F09C.ps

I obtained the following results.

EXT3 inode numbers
(manually sorted here) match the copy order
-----------------------------------------------
6998658 F08C.ps
6998659 F06C.ps
6998660 F03C.ps
6998661 F05C.ps
6998662 F10C.ps
6998663 F02C.ps
6998664 F07C.ps
6998665 F04C.ps
6998666 F01C.ps
6998667 F09C.ps

EXT3 Directory Order (ls -U1)
--------------------------------
F04C.ps
F02C.ps
F03C.ps
F05C.ps
F09C.ps
F08C.ps
F10C.ps
F07C.ps
F01C.ps
F06C.ps

Distiller Order
matches Directory order
-------------------------
F04C.ps
F02C.ps
F03C.ps
F05C.ps
F09C.ps
F08C.ps
F10C.ps
F07C.ps
F01C.ps
F06C.ps

I see that the directory order does not match the inode order (which is 
the same as the copy order). Would this be due to the current 
asynchronous nature of filesystem operations? Let's try that: I will now 
reboot the server machine with the sync option on filesystem mount.
...
Rebooted with sync on that filesystem. Copied the files again to a newly 
created dir, etc. The results are the same. Why doesn't the directory 
order reflect the inode order?

Time for further study.
Thank you again!