ext2_find_entry is quite expensive for directories with lots of entries
- what about caching the block and offset in the dcache?

Each dentry contains 2 values reserved for the filesystem:
dentry->d_fsdata
dentry->d_time

ext2 doesn't use them - yet.

I've written a small patch that caches the directory block & offset into
these variables, and one test (lots of create, remove, rename in one
directory) is 20% faster than the unpatched 2.4.1 kernel.

No disk format change.

The patch is attached, it survives dbench, kernel compiles and other
stress tests.
But that doesn't mean that it won't eat your filesystem ;-)
--
	Manfred