Les Mikesell wrote:
> Jim Leonard wrote:
>> Les Mikesell wrote:
>>> With backuppc the issue is not so much fragmentation within a file as
>>> the distance between the directory entry, the inode, and the file
>>> content.  When creating a new file, filesystems generally attempt to
>>> allocate these close to each other, but when you link an existing file
>>> into a new directory, that obviously can't be done so you end up with a
>>> lot of long seeks when you try to traverse directories picking up the
>>> inode info.
>> For some filesystem implementations, this is true.  For others, it is
>> not, due to judicious use of caching, preloading, and lookahead.
>
> Why would any filesystem 'judiciously' cache things for unlikely use patterns?

Because it's written much better than the filesystem whose behavior
you're outlining above?  These are solved issues in modern filesystems.