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From: Ron Johnson <[email protected]>
To: Pgsql-admin <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Request For Feature: pg_dump
Date: Fri, 22 May 2026 14:41:42 -0400
Message-ID: <CANzqJaAb149k3pYmbnZ8-Mcc7Ec_DwJMkKiZK=tPA34Rsq_kDw@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <[email protected]>
References: <CANzqJaCNaqhQ9duPP+eKU2OR1wjGYW-FBQ2FZXqnBRb6XAnKQA@mail.gmail.com>
	<[email protected]>
	<CANzqJaCJGS9S=ibJ_rOmP=acA7n0XCA5R4FbMH+AH3WURhey8Q@mail.gmail.com>
	<[email protected]>

On Fri, May 22, 2026 at 2:09 PM Holger Jakobs <[email protected]> wrote:

> Am 22.05.26 um 19:20 schrieb Ron Johnson:
>
> On Fri, May 22, 2026 at 12:53 PM Tom Lane <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> Ron Johnson <[email protected]> writes:
>> > In --format=directory mode, remove .dat files with zero data records,
>> and
>> > mark that table's toc.dat entry that it's an empty table.
>>
>> > Justification: *lots* of empty tables means *lots* of teeny-tiny files
>> in
>> > the DB's dump directory.  That unnecessarily bloats the fs, and makes
>> "du
>> > -c" really really slow.
>>
>> Evidence please?  Most file systems that I've looked at optimize
>> zero-size files pretty well.
>>
>
> They aren't zero bytes.
> It's those pesky 5 (or 14 or whatever size that gzip and lz4 produces)
> byte files.  66 thousand tiny files plus 8 thousand files with data in them
> makes for a 2.4MB directory.  That's big and slow.
>
> $ find . -size 14c | wc
>   66180   66180 1191240
>
> $ zstd -dk 2115841.dat.zst
> 2115841.dat.zst     : 5 bytes
>
> $ cat 2115841.dat
> \.
>
> $ dir | grep " 14 " | head -n20
> -rw-r--r-- 1 postgres postgres         14 2026-05-22 00:50:30
> 2115841.dat.zst
> -rw-r--r-- 1 postgres postgres         14 2026-05-22 00:50:30
> 2115842.dat.zst
> -rw-r--r-- 1 postgres postgres         14 2026-05-22 00:50:30
> 2115843.dat.zst
> -rw-r--r-- 1 postgres postgres         14 2026-05-22 00:50:30
> 2115844.dat.zst
> -rw-r--r-- 1 postgres postgres         14 2026-05-22 00:50:30
> 2115845.dat.zst
> -rw-r--r-- 1 postgres postgres         14 2026-05-22 00:50:30
> 2115851.dat.zst
> -rw-r--r-- 1 postgres postgres         14 2026-05-22 00:50:30
> 2115899.dat.zst
> -rw-r--r-- 1 postgres postgres         14 2026-05-22 00:50:30
> 2115901.dat.zst
> -rw-r--r-- 1 postgres postgres         14 2026-05-22 00:50:30
> 2115902.dat.zst
> -rw-r--r-- 1 postgres postgres         14 2026-05-22 00:50:30
> 2115903.dat.zst
> -rw-r--r-- 1 postgres postgres         14 2026-05-22 00:50:30
> 2115905.dat.zst
> -rw-r--r-- 1 postgres postgres         14 2026-05-22 00:50:30
> 2115907.dat.zst
> -rw-r--r-- 1 postgres postgres         14 2026-05-22 00:50:30
> 2115909.dat.zst
> -rw-r--r-- 1 postgres postgres         14 2026-05-22 00:50:30
> 2115913.dat.zst
> -rw-r--r-- 1 postgres postgres         14 2026-05-22 00:50:30
> 2115915.dat.zst
> -rw-r--r-- 1 postgres postgres         14 2026-05-22 00:50:30
> 2115917.dat.zst
> -rw-r--r-- 1 postgres postgres         14 2026-05-22 00:50:30
> 2115919.dat.zst
> -rw-r--r-- 1 postgres postgres         14 2026-05-22 00:50:30
> 2115923.dat.zst
> -rw-r--r-- 1 postgres postgres         14 2026-05-22 00:50:30
> 2115926.dat.zst
> -rw-r--r-- 1 postgres postgres         14 2026-05-22 00:50:30
> 2115931.dat.zst
>
> --
> Death to <Redacted>, and butter sauce.
> Don't boil me, I'm still alive.
> <Redacted> lobster!
>
> Maybe just avoiding to compress empty files would already do the job.
>

The files aren't empty, though, since they have the terminating "\."


> I think any file below a certain size isn't worth compressing.
>

-- 
Death to <Redacted>, and butter sauce.
Don't boil me, I'm still alive.
<Redacted> lobster!


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