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

[Bill Pechter]

In article <rdSdnTee6OfhV37UnZ2dnUVZ_jGdnZ2d at giganews.com>,
Dennis Boone <drb at ihatespam.msu.edu> wrote:
> > 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.
>

Really... Not true in AT&T based Unixes using the SystemV 1k filesystem.
Fragmentation was an issue.  Before that it was even worse.
I remember doing ncheck, icheck etc before there was FSCK.

Mount verification in progress and the bitmap check on VMS was a whole
lot better.  BSD very different than the AT&T based Unix filesystems.

VMS and the BSD's were a bit better in trying to keep the allocations 
together.

The BSD Fast Filesystem and it's decendants were a huge improvement over
the AT&T filesystems which looked and acted like they were written for
RK05's. (and they were...)

Bill
-- 
-- 
Digital had it then.  Don't you wish you could buy it now!
              pechter-at-pechter.dyndns.org