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

[John]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: centos-bounces at centos.org 
> [mailto:centos-bounces at centos.org] On Behalf Of Filipe Brandenburger
> Sent: Saturday, January 24, 2009 8:13 PM
> To: CentOS mailing list
> Subject: Re: [CentOS] OT? File order on CentOS/Samba server
> 
> Oi Miguel,
> 
> On Sat, Jan 24, 2009 at 15:24, Miguel Medalha 
> <miguelmedalha at sapo.pt> wrote:
> > Thank you for caring to look for and post the code.
> 
> No problem! Glad to help.
> 
> > At first I became very excited about it. But then I tried it...
> >
> > It does work. The problem is that it suffers from the same 
> illness as
> > runfilex does: it takes forever. The process starts very 
> swiftly but each
> > new processed page takes longer and longer until it all 
> slows to a crawl.
> > Worse yet, Distiller goes on to use enormous (> 90%) 
> amounts of CPU time.
> >
> > I just measured the process as folllows, for the same set of files,
> > corresponding to a 32 page publication in A3 format:
> >
> > rundirex: 3m42s
> > runfilex: 1h29m54s
> > Wikipedia code: 1h14m55s
> 
> That is really weird, since it's only sorting a list before starting
> the processing, but once the processing is started, it does exactly
> the same in both cases (the only difference is that in one case
> "filenameforall" is used and in the other case "forall" is used over
> an array with the sorted list of files).
> 
> Do you have a support contract with Adobe? If you do, I think you
> should bring up this issue with them and try to figure out where the
> huge performance difference is coming from, since it should not.
> 
> > I suppose I will end up creating a FAT32 partition on the 
> server just for
> > this purpose.
> 
> and:
> 
> > I just turned dir_index OFF with tune2fs. Now the directory 
> order is the
> > same as the inode order. This makes the order of files 
> predictable and
> > in fact turns out to solve my problem.
> >
> > With dir_index turned OFF on that filesystem, when a copy is made to
> > another directory (even from Windows on a Samba share) the
> > alphanumeric order is preserved. I will just ask the workstation
> > operators to copy the PS files to a new folder when they are all
> > ready. Distiller is watching that folder and will process 
> the files in the
> > normal way, using the rundirex file.
> 
> I don't think turning dir_index off will make the order as predictable
> as you want it. It may be a good enough work around for now, but it
> might lead to strange problems in the future that you may end up
> having to deal with again.
> 
> I would really advise you to investigate why when you list the files
> in the order you want in the input file it takes so long.
------
Filipe, it is possible it is taking so long to do a "sort" because when
doing it, it caches it on the client side of Distiller also + does it on the
Samba Server to. IE; Sorts on Both Sides.

I have had this happen in .Net. When doing a sort in .Net the default is to
sort on the client and the server.

JohnStanley