UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hello,

I have 10 servers on Debian 4.0. They are working fine, but I have one folder on each of them where programs are storing some files with their results.

Those are text files with few lines of text and nothing else.

There is another program that reading those files, delete them and their content write into mysql DB.

After some time of writing and removing those files, I can`t work with that folder normally. If I want to do ls command on it, it takes entire day to do that. But, if I remove that folder and create new one it works like charm.
And after some time, all over again.

Does anyone know what`s the broblem here?

The filedescriptor of directories grow, and never shrinks...and with lost of modification /deletion etc you create FS fragmentation...
When they are of huge size and have severe fragmentation, performance issue arise...
You are doing the right thing by creating a new one and removing the ancient...
Depending of your file sytem, you could try to defragment (e.g. VXFS has somt utilities...)