Just some more thoughts.
On Fri, Jan 12, 2001 at 10:53:10PM +0000, Mike Hollyman wrote:
Actually, if you have LOTS of users and expect more, start a hierarchy now. You don't want a single directory with thousands of links or directories.
(In my experience this depends upon your automounter.)
I'd recommend:
/home/a/ab/abb/abba /home/m/mi/mik/mikeh
Do the 3 level from the start and avoid the performance hit of many files in a single directory for lookups, when apps need to stat . .. etc.
The autofs variants (Solaris, later Irix, etc), that implement the automount point as a filesystem in its own right, do not actually create symlinks or any real file - it's all out of memory - and you'll find that they don't have any degredation with large numbers of directory entries (and I did try *a lot* back when I was playing with it)
Of course, If you do want to balance things this way, you may find a better spread by taking the last three characters of the username. (It goes without saying that if you have mandated usernames that just all happen to begin or end with the same characters then you need to come up with something else.)
divide up that way with common names). Later, you can expand that to more filers, if needed, just move one letter at a time.
(not to be confused with the Automounter allowing you to move one or more as required. You don't *have* to move them all in one go)
James.