File Coverage

blib/lib/Linux/NFS/BigDir.pm

Criterion	Covered	Total	%
statement	24	24	100.0
branch			n/a
condition			n/a
subroutine	8	8	100.0
pod			n/a
total	32	32	100.0

package Linux::NFS::BigDir;
use strict;
use warnings;
use Exporter 'import';
use Carp;
use Fcntl;
use Config;

use constant BUF_SIZE     => 4096;
use constant SYS_getdents => do {
    use Inline 0.80 C => <<'...';
#include

int _get_syscall_num() {
      return SYS_getdents;
}
...

    _get_syscall_num();
};

our $VERSION = '0.002'; # VERSION

=pod

=head1 NAME

Linux::NFS::BigDir - use Linux getdents syscall to read large directories over NFS

=head1 SYNOPSIS

    use Linux::NFS::BigDir qw(getdents);
    # entries_ref is an array reference
    my $entries_ref = getdents($very_large_dir);

=head1 DESCRIPTION

This module was created to solve a very specific problem: you have a directory over NFS, mounted by
a Linux OS, and that directory has a very large number of items (files, directories, etc). The number of entries
is so large that you have trouble to list the contents with C or even C from the shell. In extreme
cases, the operation just "hangs" and will provide a feedback hours later.

I observed this behavior only with NFS version 3 (and wasn't able to simulate it with local EXT3/EXT4): you might find in different situations,
but in that case it migh be a wrong configuration regarding the filesystem. Ask your administrator first.

If you can't fix (or get fixed) the problem, then you might want to try to use this module. It will use the C
syscall from Linux. You can check the documentation about this syscall with C in a shell.

In short, this syscall will return a data structure, but you probably will want to use only the name of each entry in the directory.

How can this be useful? Here are some directions:

=over

=item 1.

You want to remove all directory content.

=item 2.

You want to remove files from the directory with a pattern in their filename (using regular expressions, for example).

=item 3.

You want to select specific files by their filenames and then test something else (like atime).

=back

These are examples, but it should cover the vast majority of what you want to do. C syscall will be more effective because
it will not call C of each of those files before returning the information to you. That means, you will have the opportunity to filter
whatever you need and then call C if you really need.

I came up at C after researching about "how to remove million of files". After a while I reached an C program example that uses C
to print the filenames under the directory. By using it, I was able to cleanup directories with thousands (or even millions) of files in a couple of minutes,
instead of many hours.

This module is a Perl implementation of that.

=head1 FUNCTIONS

The sub C and C are exported on demand.

=cut

our @EXPORT_OK = qw(getdents getdents_safe);

=head2 getdents

Expects the complete path to the directory as a parameter.

Returns an array reference with all files inside that directory but the 'dot' files.

Meanwhile simple (and probably faster), you should be careful regarding memory restrictions when using this functions.

If you have too many files, you program may try to allocate too much memory, with all the undesired effects. See C.

=cut

sub getdents {
    my $dir = shift;
    confess "directory $dir is not available" unless ( -d $dir );
    sysopen( my $fd, $dir, O_RDONLY | O_DIRECTORY );
    my @items;

    while (1) {
        my $buf = "\0" x BUF_SIZE;
        my $read = syscall( SYS_getdents, fileno($fd), $buf, BUF_SIZE );

        if ( ( $read == -1 ) and ( $! != 0 ) ) {
            confess "failed to syscall getdents: $!";
        }

        last if ( $read == 0 );

        while ( $read != 0 ) {
            my ( $ino, $off, $len, $name ) = unpack( "L!L!SZ*", $buf );
            push( @items, $name );
            substr( $buf, 0, $len ) = '';
            $read -= $len;
        }

    }

    # removing '.' and '..'
    shift(@items);
    shift(@items);
    return \@items;
}

=head2 getdents_safe

"Safe" version of C because it will write each entry read to a text file instead of storing
all the entries on memory.

Expects as parameters:

=over

=item *

The complete path to the directory to be read.

=item *

The complete path to the file that will be used to print each entry, one per line. As convenience, all filenames will be
prepended with the complete path to the directory given as parameter.

=back

The filename given will be created. If it already exists, this function will C.

This function returns the number of files read from the given directory.

=cut

sub getdents_safe {
    my ( $dir, $output ) = @_;
    confess "directory $dir is not available" unless ( -d $dir );
    sysopen( my $fd,  $dir,    O_RDONLY | O_DIRECTORY );
    sysopen( my $out, $output, O_CREAT | O_RDWR | O_EXCL )
      or die "Cannot create $output: $!";
    my $dots    = 0;
    my $counter = 0;

    while (1) {
        my $buf = "\0" x BUF_SIZE;
        my $read = syscall( SYS_getdents, fileno($fd), $buf, BUF_SIZE );

        if ( ( $read == -1 ) and ( $! != 0 ) ) {
            confess "failed to syscall getdents: $!";
        }

        last if ( $read == 0 );

        if ( $dots == 2 ) {

            while ( $read != 0 ) {
                my ( $ino, $off, $len, $name ) = unpack( "L!L!SZ*", $buf );
                print $out $dir, '/', $name, "\n";
                $counter++;
                substr( $buf, 0, $len ) = '';
                $read -= $len;
            }

        }
        else {

            while ( $read != 0 ) {
                my ( $ino, $off, $len, $name ) = unpack( "L!L!SZ*", $buf );

                unless ( ( $name eq '.' ) or ( $name eq '..' ) ) {
                    print $out $dir, '/', $name, "\n";
                    $counter++;
                }
                else {
                    $dots++;
                }

                substr( $buf, 0, $len ) = '';
                $read -= $len;
            }

        }

    }

    close($out);
    return $counter;
}


=head1 TO DO

Create C versions of C and C with L to see if they get close to C
speed when running over a B file system (currently they are slower).

=head1 SEE ALSO

=over

=item *

L

=item *

L

=item *

The manual page of C.

=item *

L.

=back

=head1 AUTHOR

Alceu Rodrigues de Freitas Junior, [e-mail]

=head1 COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

This software is copyright (c) 2016 of Alceu Rodrigues de Freitas Junior, [e-mail]

This file is part of Linux-NFS-BigDir distribution.

Linux-NFS-BigDir is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

Linux-NFS-BigDir is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with Linux-NFS-BigDir. If not, see .

=cut

1;