capacity of keyring

[Holger Sesterhenn]

Hi,

> Do you know how many keys can you put into a keystore and
> still be fast?
> What happens when I put 10.000 keys in there? What about 100.000 keys?

I have done some tests with dumps from a HKP keyserver (> 20MB of data, 
25000 keys, SuSE Linux 9.x and own Linux distribution).
GnuPG 1.2.3 crashed during import after about 2500 keys. GnuPG 1.3.9X 
and 1.4.0 did the job but terribly slow.

It took more than 6 hours to '--import' on a P-IV/2,4 MHz (512 MB RAM, 
40 GB ATA)  and was only a bit faster on a dual P-IV/3 Mhz (2 GB RAM, 
SCSI with 64 MB Cache controller).

It's because GnuPG has to scan the whole keyring again and again if you 
append keys to it. It's an exponential behaviour.

GnuPG is still a client software not designed to handle such an amount 
of keys.

But as Werner mentioned, this may change in future releases ;-).
-- 
Best Regards,

Holger Sesterhenn
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