Cron work-around: a weekly "cd /var/lib/dpkg && mv info info.bak && cp
-a info.bak info && rm -R info.bak" to keep the directory contiguous.

ReiserFS work-around: create a ReiserFS partition especially to hold
/var/lib/dpkg/info.  ReiserFS was specifically designed to handle
zillions of tiny files in one massive directory (under the philosophy
that databases mostly because filesystems aren't up to the task).  As
/var/lib/dpkg/info demonstrates, ext3 is having having fragmentation
trouble on huge database-like directories.

Short-term solution:  Have the default Ubuntu installation defragment
/var/lib/dpkg/info regularly

Long-term solution: Have dpkg use a database instead of
/var/lib/dpkg/info.  I deduce that the person who specified
/var/lib/dpkg/info as a massive directory of tiny files was expecting
ReiserFS to become the standard filesystem.  Since that's not going to
happen, it's about time to use a database.

-- 
"Reading Database" takes too long
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/398870
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