[nzlug] 'Chunked' file systems?

[Cliff Pratt]

Robin Sheat wrote:
> On Friday 01 September 2006 09:07, Cliff Pratt wrote:
>> Rather than have a directory with a bunch of tiny files in, which causes
>> havoc with backups and copies and such, is there any way that I can have
>> a 'directory' with a bunch of 'files' that can be copied and or backed
>> up as a unit.
> You mean like a tar.gz or .zip file? Or do you want to be able to access it as 
> both a lot of small files, and as one big lump? In that case, do something 
> like use dd to create a file as large as you'll need, mkfs to format it to 
> ext2[0] or something, and then mount it. But it seems like a strange system 
> that would have issues with many small files. Typically Linux (and UNIX) 
> filesystems have handled this kind of thing well, I thought.
> 
> [0] ext2 is probably good due to being low overhead, and the consistency 
> hopefully being provided by the journalling FS below it
> 
Mmm, thanks. By 'many' I mean several tens of thousands. Do your 
comments still apply as regards ext2/3?

Cheers,

Cliff