I've got a directory on an NFS server. I think it's been filling up with log files, and may be in excess of a million.

(ls -d shows me a 350MB rather than the usual 4k).

strace -fTt ls -1 -f is stalling on 'getdents' system call. I assume it'll complete eventually, but ... well, the 'leave it and wait' hasn't yet.

Does anyone have any good tricks on a filer for helping me tell that a) this directory is in fact, absurdly large and b) starting to retrieve filenames so I can delete/move them in sensibly sized baches?

(I'm wondering if a filer-side ls is going to help or hinder, for example).