[clue-tech] Why is rm so slow?

[David L. Willson]

How do I get rm to stop "sweeping up", and just mark the space available, instead?  It
takes a ridiculous amount of time to delete large files.

For example, it took me more than 1s per GB earlier.  I don't want to block-erase the
file, just mark it deleted or unlink it, like FAT and NTFS do, and move on with life.

====================== shell session ======================

kadmin at kiosk-l1:/offsite
$ ls -sh
total 243G
4.0K ACT                          9.1G KIOSK04-2008-06-full.bkf
4.0K current-rsync                3.0G KIOSK05-2008-06-29-diff.bkf
585M KIOSK01-2008-06-27-diff.bkf  6.7G KIOSK05-2008-06-full.bkf
 17G KIOSK01-2008-06-full.bkf     2.0G KIOSK06-2008-06-27-diff.bkf
581M KIOSK02-2008-06-27-diff.bkf  2.0G KIOSK06-2008-06-28-diff.bkf
5.9G KIOSK02-2008-06-full.bkf     6.8G KIOSK06-2008-06-full.bkf
 22G KIOSK03-2008-06-27-diff.bkf  2.5G KIOSK10-2008-06-27-diff.bkf
 22G KIOSK03-2008-06-28-diff.bkf   11G KIOSK10-2008-06-full.bkf
132G KIOSK03-2008-06-full.bkf     4.0K lost+found
1.7G KIOSK04-2008-06-27-diff.bkf

kadmin at kiosk-l1:/offsite
$ time rm -f KIOSK03-2008-06-27-diff.bkf

real    0m35.734s
user    0m0.000s
sys     0m1.220s

kadmin at kiosk-l1:/offsite
$ time rm -f KIOSK06-2008-06-27-diff.bkf

real    0m3.001s
user    0m0.000s
sys     0m0.110s

kadmin at kiosk-l1:/offsite
$ 
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