[crossfire] Forward of moderated message

[Andrew Fuchs]

On 7/8/06, crossfire-devel-bounces at lists.sourceforge.net
<crossfire-devel-bounces at lists.sourceforge.net> wrote:
...
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: "Daimonin" <info at daimonin.net>
...
> In beta 4 we fixed this some month ago by changing the /data/players
> structure like sourceforge manages their user accounts:
>
> we take the first 2 characters of a name, and sort it in a new subfolder
> structure like this..
>
> the name "aab1" and "aab2" will be sorted in this:
>
> data/players/
> a/
> a/aa/
> a/ab/aab1 <- player folder
> a/ab/aab2 <- another player
> a/ac/
> a/ad/
> ..
> ..
> b/
> b/ba/
> b/bb/
> ...
>
> This works very fine and should have a good effect too under files systems
> which scale up with many sub folders (in cpu time).
>
> Of course its not a "100%" fix. In theory, a server can have such many
> players,
> that even a sub folder hit the 32000 folder problem.

Dawn of Time (mud server) uses a similar system to store player files.
 It also uses it for extra security, by requiring that
wizard/dungeonmaster/immortal players be in a separate directory (at
least from what it seems when i was messing with it).

> Possible fixes then:
> - use explicit a file system which don't use hard links.
> - change to a DB storing (but there we have performance and
> storing problems perhaps too under different OS?)

A DB is the way to go, if you expect LOTS of users, otherwise it just
adds another dependency.  This could be a possible argument for
modularization.

-- 
Andrew Fuchs