1500+ files in Unix directory

Today I was showing WinSCP to a bunch of doubtful Indian guys expecting them to jump with joy that they can integrate Windows & Unix systems that easy.
It all went fine until I reached a directory with 1700 files in it. The plugin simply froze. It took quite some time, I think about 5-10 minutes, for it to display the contents. Putty, on the other hand, rolls it out right away, the whole set.

Is it smth you could try to reproduce on your end?

Remote system: Solaris 5.8
Client OS: Windows XP
Plugin configs: both SCP & SFTP
Plugin version: 1.4.1 (downloaded it yesterday)
FAR version: 1.70 beta 5
Indian guys: very doubtful

Thank you

forgot to log in the forum...

Listing directory using SFTP will always be slower than in Putty. With SSH terminal (putty), the listing is pushed to the client possibly at the maximal speed the connection allows. With SFTP, client asks for first set of file, when it receives it contains also information whether it should ask for more. So with slow connection, it mostly waits for the reply, not using full bandwidth. However I do not think that this explains 5-10 minutes "hang". 1700 files is not that much. I have tried to list directory with 500 files over rather slow connection. With Putty is takes 4 seconds, with SFTP it takes 7 seconds.

BTW: By Putty, do you mean the terminal client, not the PSFTP client?

One more idea: If the files in the directory are actually symbolic links, it will slow down the reading significantly, because WinSCP resolves the symlinks. Read more in documentation.

The only problem with this is that FAR plugin doesn't allow to change directory settings (FAR's plugin configuration).
Is there any other way this can be edited, like in the registry, for instance?

And you were right - there are almost 500 symbolic links in that directory.

Restless FAR fanatic wrote:

The only problem with this is that FAR plugin doesn't allow to change directory settings (FAR's plugin configuration).
Is there any other way this can be edited, like in the registry, for instance?

What settings do you mean? I guess you would like to turn off the Resolve symbolic links option. It is on Dirs tab of Add/Edit session dialog.

martin wrote:

Restless FAR fanatic wrote:

The only problem with this is that FAR plugin doesn't allow to change directory settings (FAR's plugin configuration).
Is there any other way this can be edited, like in the registry, for instance?

What settings do you mean? I guess you would like to turn off the Resolve symbolic links option. It is on Dirs tab of Add/Edit session dialog.

Ah! In the session properties itself. Never seen these before. Turned the link resolution off and it's now working fast. Well, I guess I have to get back to these suspicious IT professionals and show them the beauty of FAR&WinSCP.

Thank you Martin.

Restless FAR fanatic wrote:

Well, I guess I have to get back to these suspicious IT professionals and show them the beauty of FAR&WinSCP.

Good luck :-)