Re: Bits from the release team: the plans for etch
On 27-Oct-05, 07:53 (CDT), Steve Langasek <vorlon@debian.org> wrote:
> Nah, the biggest hit isn't disk space, it's NSS lookup times from having to
> do a linear search through a flat-file /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow. Well,
> thank God no one uses pam_pwdb anymore, at least...
I'd be willing to bet that you can look through a few hundred system
accounts (which is way more than we're talking about removing) a lot
quicker than you can get a reply from a remote LDAP server. Maybe not
the first time, but once it's cached...and it will stay cached, if
you're doing enough lookups to care.
I'd also be willing to bet you can't reliably measure the difference
removing 15 inactive sytem accounts makes to lookups on a system made
in the last 10 years, at anything above the processor cycle level. (I
suppose I should restrict that "any semi-normal general purpose system",
to keep someone from coming up with a 8080-based embedded system that
reads /etc/password from paper tape.)
Where people run into problems with the linear search is with 10K user
accounts, which is irrelevant to what we're discussing.
Steve
--
Steve Greenland
The irony is that Bill Gates claims to be making a stable operating
system and Linus Torvalds claims to be trying to take over the
world. -- seen on the net
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