* Mark Felder:
> Why do you feel the need to defrag your *nix box?
Some file systems (such as XFS) read the whole extent list into RAM
when a file is opened. When the extend list is long due to
fragmentation, this can take a *long* time (in the order of minutes
with multi-gigabyte Oracle Berkeley DB files). This phenomenon is
less pronounced with PostgreSQL because it splits large relations into
one-gigabyte chunks, and it writes the files sequentally. But a small
effect is probably still there.
--
Florian Weimer <fweimer@bfk.de>
BFK edv-consulting GmbH http://www.bfk.de/
Kriegsstraße 100 tel: +49-721-96201-1
D-76133 Karlsruhe fax: +49-721-96201-99