Hey Matt,
A QMT user recently had a few problems with their dir_control values
(mysql), which got me to thinking about the directory hashing.
QMT uses the --disable-users-big-dir configure option, so user
directories are never hashed. (BTW, this option also appears to allow
single-digit user names, which I haven't seen documented anywhere except
in the change log). So hashed user directories don't exist in QMT. I was
thinking that it'd be nice to have a --disable-domains-big-dir option as
well, which would keep domains from being hashed. From the looks of the
code involved with --disable-users-big-dir, I'm guessing that it
wouldn't take much to code the option for domains.
Then I thought a little more about it. What if the
#define MAX_USERS_PER_LEVEL 100
value that's in the vauth.h file was a field in the dir_control record?
That would allow admins to control the behavior of hashing, setting it
according to their particular environment, without needing to rebuild
with a different config option. There'd be no additional i/o involved,
because the dir_control record is already fetched. In an ext3
environment, it could be set (by the admin) to 30000 (ext3 supports
32000 subdirectories), and with ext4 it could be set to 60000 (ext4
supports 64000). These settings would for the most part disable hashed
directories, while still allowing hashes should the filesystem limits be
approached. Of course, a default value in dir_control could still be
100, which would maintain former behavior. If this were done, the
--disable-users-big-dir option should probably be changed to
--allow-single-digit-users as well. ;)
Please let me know what the prospects of such changes are. If it doesn't
look like anything that might ever happen in this area, I just may patch
the vauth.h file to be 30000 and call it done.
Thanks for your consideration.
--
-Eric 'shubes'
!DSPAM:5023131e34211160355790!
