a list of Fedora 18 package names?

[Chris Adams]

Once upon a time, Matthew Miller <mattdm at fedoraproject.org> said:
> On Wed, Jan 23, 2013 at 12:00:14PM -0300, Fernando Cassia wrote:
> > <mattdm at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> > > Not for no reason. Directories with a very large number of files place undue
> > > strain on the mirrors.
> > can you elaborate on the nature of such ´strain´?. Sounds like an
> > excuse taken straight out of the BOFH excuses dice.
> 
> It's not rocket science. Large directory listings are large.

To expand: when clients browse to a directory, the webserver daemon has
to generate a directory listing (usually sorted, which means the daemon
has to retrieve the whole directory into memory, sort it, and then
generate the HTML to send to the client).  With large directories, that
blocks that webserver process/thread for a noticable time.  A relatively
small number of requests can slow down and/or block other access.

It would be possible to pre-generate the directory listings, maybe even
dynamically regenerating them whenever the directories change, but that
would add significant complication.  Since the largest user of such a
system is mirror servers (most "regular" webservers have directory
listings disabled), and mirror servers represent a very small percentage
of deployed webservers, nobody has done this.

-- 
Chris Adams <cmadams at hiwaay.net>
Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services
I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.