Re: Garbage entries with intense use

[Rafa <rafael.cano.ext@juntadeandalucia.es>]

Today we have done a test. We have created an empty service (only three 
entries), and we have seen that the .dbb files had about 8kb. After 
importing a branch with more than 100 entries some files have got fat to 
130 kb (more or less). A while after we have deleted the branch and... 
sizes have not changed! No files have changed!

Sorry, Howard, here are the software versions:
- openldap 2.0.21-4
- Berkeley DB 3.3.11-3

The OS is AIX., althoung this also happens in other ldap we have running 
under debian (i don't know the versions).

Thanks!



A tip I didn't mention, the ldap service is indexed, so there are enough 
.dbb files, as you said.

Howard Chu wrote:

> Note that most tar programs don't understand how to deal with sparse 
> files. GNU tar does, but since you've given practically no information 
> about the software you're using, there's nothing we can say with 
> certainty.
>
> Rafa wrote:
>
> > The environment was set up by other person, so I can't say much.
> > We noticed the problem making backups with tar, and recently I have 
> > seen this again. Althoung I deleted some big branches, my tar was 
> > some mb bigger than the one I made a week before. And the .tgz file 
> > included all the .dbb files in the folder.
> >
> > Howard Chu wrote:
> >
> > > Rafa wrote:
> > >
> > > > I have noticed that when I do massive updates on my OpenLdap my db 
> > > > size increases astonishingly, so I have to take an ldif and create 
> > > > from scratch periodically. Obvioulsy a garbage-entries problem, but 
> > > > seems to be very frequent. I supose it is a db problem, not an ldap 
> > > > problem (in that case, it would have been fixed yet ;)). I don't 
> > > > know exactly wich db uses my server, but it uses .dbb extensions in 
> > > > its files.
> > > > Do you know where is the problem exactly? If the cause is in the db 
> > > > engine, can you recommend me a better one?
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > You didn't mention the version numbers of anything you're currently 
> > > using. The best available DB engine at the moment is Berkeley DB 
> > > 4.2.52(+2 patches). Note that database files tend to be sparse, and 
> > > generally don't actually use as much disk space as the size in their 
> > > directory listing would indicate, so you may be reacting to 
> > > something that isn't a real problem.