[Info-vax] Anyone interested in another public access system

[Dennis Boone]

 > What would you cite as an example of a "modern" file system?  Most Unix
 > systems won't even commit your file to disk until they get around
 > to it.  One of the nice things about VMS is that what you write to
 > disk is actually committed to disk within a few seconds.

Not even close to true, at least for free unices.  Linux and *BSD
have sync mounts which complete the write *before the call returns*.
No "few seconds".  Sync mounting is optional, giving you the choice
where you need it.  It's been a long time since I touched AIX, but
I think jfs does it too.

 > A power failure does not always require repairs to a VMS file system;
 > something that can't be said for Unix.

Again, not even close to true.  Various journaling file systems
have existed for a long time - JFS in AIX, for example, ReiserFS and
EXT3 in Linux, and others, which avoid the need for lengthy fsck at
reboot time.

 > Unix provides no means to create a contiguous file; just splatter it
 > all over the disk!.  Even <obligatory retching noises> Windows has
 > a utility to make your files and free space contiguous.  Unix just
 > doesn't care.

All over the disk?  Nonsense.  Unices have always tried to keep files
(and their related inodes) contiguous or close together on the disk.
Defrag utilities exist for some filesystems, and though coverage could
be better, fixing it later with a defrag tool is a bass-ackwards fix.
In any event, the idea that the system has to *force* the file to be
contiguous can't be useful very often -- surely a best effort is better
than an abort.

The idea that nothing new has happened in the unix filesystem world
in decades is also a crock of bull; consider e.g. journaling (jfs)
and log-structured (Reiser) filesystems, content-addressed storage
(venti), networked systems like afs or coda, zfs, etc.  Most of the
above *came out of* the unix world, rather than just being implemented
there.  And I can't even begin to talk about Irix, HP-UX, or some of
the cluster file systems.

De