Re: More on Hard Links

[Hubert Chan <hubert@uhoreg.ca>]

>>>>> "Narcoleptic" == Narcoleptic Electron <narcoleptic_electron@yahoo.co.uk> writes:

[...]

Narcoleptic> If there is a way to quickly and reliably verify that two
Narcoleptic> files are identical (or not), then when committing a
Narcoleptic> transaction, each file in the sync list can be resolved as
Narcoleptic> follows: ...

I'm temporarily confused and can't think straight.  I'll reply to this
proposal later.  My immediate reaction is that it doesn't solve the
problem that I brought up, but I'll think about it later.

[...]

>> >> It's hard to differentiate that from the volume just being
>> unmounted.

Narcoleptic> There is no need to differentiate from a volume going down
Narcoleptic> and just being unmounted.

There is, because if a volume is just unmounted, then you can go ahead
and prevent writes to a file that is shared on that volume.  But if the
volume dies for some reason, the filesystem should allow writes, since
you can't mount the dead volume to re-allow writes.  So that file
becomes perpetually unwritable.

I suppose that you could write a recovery program such that you enter a
dead volume's ID, and it searches through the other volumes and cleans
up the now-dead links.  It might be annoying to have to do that, but I
suppose it's doable.  Of course, that's assuming you've recorded the
volume ID... :-/

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Hubert Chan <hubert@uhoreg.ca> - http://www.uhoreg.ca/
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