Xfce Forum

Tenrag

Member

Registered: 2016-08-04

Posts: 5

Browsing dirs with lots of files

Hello,
I have a very annoying problem with thunar:
When I open a dir with lots of sub-dirs (12000+) I have to wait for the list to load.
This is understanable since thunar needs to read a lot of names from the disk.
I accept and have no problem with this

However when I enter one of the subdirectories and go back It loads all over again...
My routine in traversing those dirs is to enter a sub-dir, (do stuff), go back, enter another sub-dir... and so on..
In my case loading takes about 5-6 seconds every time which is unacceptable for me.

Is there a file list cache of some sort that I could modify to make the subsequent loads faster?
The obvious problem with such cache is problems with detecting new/deleted files, but I would be willing to sacrifice this functionality for faster loading times.

I do not mind some simple source code fidling, so if there is some magic cache size constant that I would need to increase and recompile I will be more than happy to do this.

I used to do this on windows, and file explorer there seemd to work as expected. (caching once visited locations).

Do you have any Ideas?

MountainDewManiac

Member

From: Where Mr. Bankruptcy is Prez

Registered: 2013-03-24

Posts: 1,115

Re: Browsing dirs with lots of files

When I open a dir with lots of sub-dirs (12000+)

I have to wait for the list to load.
This is understanable since thunar needs to read a lot of names from the disk.

However when I enter one of the subdirectories and go back It loads all over again...
My routine in traversing those dirs is to enter a sub-dir, (do stuff), go back, enter another sub-dir... and so on..
In my case loading takes about 5-6 seconds every time which is unacceptable for me.

This is not a solution, but it might serve as a workaround: What happens if, instead of switching to one of the subdirectories, you open that subdirectory in a separate tab in Thunar? Does Thunar retain the parent directory information, so that when you close the tab that the subdirectory is in - or just switch to it - you can see it without the wait for reloading?

Regards,
MDM

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Mountain Dew Maniac

How to Ask for Help <=== Click on this link

Tenrag

Member

Registered: 2016-08-04

Posts: 5

Re: Browsing dirs with lots of files

Thanks for your answer.

I did a lot of testing and it seems that it's not thunar that was slow. It was samba through which I accesed the dir.
Instead of mounting it with userspace tools (thunar being the frontend) I mounted with simple ' sudo mount -t cifs'
and the time of listing all those sub-dirs is now less than 1 second.

So I guess this was a preety useless thread...

MountainDewManiac

Member

From: Where Mr. Bankruptcy is Prez

Registered: 2013-03-24

Posts: 1,115

Re: Browsing dirs with lots of files

So I guess this was a preety useless thread...

Not if you learned something. Not if someone else learned something (or will in the future).

Regards,
MDM

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Mountain Dew Maniac

How to Ask for Help <=== Click on this link