How to reindex directories located in the Ext4 filesystem

Reindex directories located in the Ext4 filesystem after removing a huge number of files to optimize directory sizes.

I will use ext4 filesystem located on the /dev/sdb1 device in this example to illustrate what happens when you delete a huge number of files.

$ lsblk -o NAME,FSTYPE,UUID,MOUNTPOINT /dev/sdb1
NAME FSTYPE UUID                                 MOUNTPOINT
sdb1 ext4   68eebaf9-0d11-45ed-a75c-6fdc44e4c8e7 /srv

Create huge_directory directory for sample data.

$ sudo mkdir /srv/huge_directory

Inspect directory size.

$ ls -lh /srv/
total 20K
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4.0K Nov 10 02:21 huge_directory
drwx------ 2 root root  16K Nov 10 02:41 lost+found

Create a huge number (50000) of files.

$ for i in $(seq 1 50000); do sudo touch /srv/huge_directory/empty_${i}.file; done

Inspect directory size.

$ ls -lh /srv/
total 1.8M
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 1.8M Nov 10 02:49 huge_directory
drwx------ 2 root root  16K Nov 10 02:41 lost+found

Delete recently created files.

$ sudo find /srv/huge_directory/ -maxdepth 1 -type f -name "empty_*.file" -delete

Inspect huge_directory directory to confirm that these files have been deleted.

$ ls -lh /srv/huge_directory/
total 0

Inspect directory size.

$ ls -lh /srv/
total 1.8M
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 1.8M Nov 10 02:51 huge_directory
drwx------ 2 root root  16K Nov 10 02:41 lost+found

Unmount Ext4 filesystem.

$ sudo umount /srv

Dry-run fsck to get summary information.

$ sudo fsck.ext4 -nvf /dev/sdb1
e2fsck 1.44.5 (15-Dec-2018)
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Pass 2: Checking directory structure
Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity
Pass 4: Checking reference counts
Pass 5: Checking group summary information
          12 inodes used (0.02%, out of 65536)
           0 non-contiguous files (0.0%)
           0 non-contiguous directories (0.0%)
             # of inodes with ind/dind/tind blocks: 0/0/0
             Extent depth histogram: 4
        9302 blocks used (3.55%, out of 261883)
           0 bad blocks
           1 large file
           0 regular files
           3 directories
           0 character device files
           0 block device files
           0 fifos
           0 links
           0 symbolic links (0 fast symbolic links)
           0 sockets
------------
           3 files

Use fsck with -D parameter to optimize directories in the Ext4 filesystem.

$ sudo fsck.ext4 -Dvf /dev/sdb1
e2fsck 1.44.5 (15-Dec-2018)
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Pass 2: Checking directory structure
Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity
Pass 3A: Optimizing directories
Pass 4: Checking reference counts
Pass 5: Checking group summary information
/dev/sdb1: ***** FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED *****
          12 inodes used (0.02%, out of 65536)
           0 non-contiguous files (0.0%)
           0 non-contiguous directories (0.0%)
             # of inodes with ind/dind/tind blocks: 0/0/0
             Extent depth histogram: 4
        8860 blocks used (3.38%, out of 261883)
           0 bad blocks
           1 large file
           0 regular files
           3 directories
           0 character device files
           0 block device files
           0 fifos
           0 links
           0 symbolic links (0 fast symbolic links)
           0 sockets
------------
           3 files

Mount Ext4 filesystem.

$ sudo mount /srv

Inspect directory size.

$ ls -lh /srv/
total 20K
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4.0K Nov 10 02:51 huge_directory
drwx------ 2 root root  16K Nov 10 02:41 lost+found

Additional notes

Excerpt from the (unofficial) Linux Kernel Mailing List archive.

Date:  Fri, 15 May 2009 06:58:15 -0400
From:  Theodore Tso <>
Subject: Re: ext3/ext4 directories don't shrink after deleting lots of files
On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 08:45:38PM -0400, Timo Sirainen wrote:
>
> I was rather thinking something that I could run while the system was
> fully operational. Otherwise just moving the files to a temp directory +
> rmdir() + rename() would have been fine too.
>
> I just tested that xfs, jfs and reiserfs all shrink the directories
> immediately. Is it more difficult to implement for ext* or has no one
> else found this to be a problem?
It's probably fairest to say no one has thought it worth the effort.
It would require some fancy games to swap out block locations in the
extent trees (life would be easier with non-extent-using inodes), and
in the case of htree, we would have to keep track of the index block
so we could remove it from the htree index.  So it's all doable, if a
bit tricky in terms of the technical details; it's just that the
people who could do it have been busy enough with other things.
It's hasn't been considered high priority because most of the time
directories don't go from holding thousands of files down to a small
handful.
            - Ted