Re: [PATCH] Use FIBMAP to sort .list files before scanning

[Florian Weimer <fw@deneb.enyo.de>]

* Morten Hustveit:

> When running dpkg from a cold cache on a system where
> /var/lib/dpkg/info/ lies on a harddisk, a lot of time is spent
> waiting for seeks between (typically) thousands of files.  This
> patch ensures that the package iterator used by
> ensure_allinstfiles_available returns the packages sorted by their
> .list file's physical location on the harddisk, greatly reducing
> drive head movements.

Have you tried using readdir() and sorting by the d_ino field?  That
should be even faster for ext3 because you hit the inode in disk
order.