[Info-vax] VMS defragmenters

[P. Sture]

In article <SWGBM3rHjEM1 at wvnvms>, cook at wvnvms.wvnet.edu (George Cook) 
wrote:

> The Acorn Fragmentation Avoider written by Glenn Everhart.  It should 
> be on the OpenVMS Freeware V3 CD.  We still run it here on both VAX
> and Alpha.  Although it was last updated in 1997, it works on Alpha
> VMS V8.2 (needing nothing more than a relink after major VMS upgrades).
> 
> From the readme:
> ----------------
> The Fragmentation Avoider consists of an intercept driver and a
> control utility which reduce the rate of VMS disk fragmentation
> in two ways:
> 
> 1. Files are extended in "contiguous best try" fashion, preventing
>         the accumulation of many tiny extents in extent cache which
>         would otherwise cause new files to be allocated in small
>         bits.
> 2. Files are extended by a fraction of their current size when this is
>         larger than the default, subject to minimum and maximum
>         extents and to a constraint of never forcing the extent
>         to be more than 1/8 of volume free space. Thus files tend
>         to be extended less often and in larger pieces than by default
>         which leads to their being far less fragmented than otherwise.
> 
> These actions are configurable on a per volume basis, and FragmentAvoid
> can be enabled or disabled separately on any disk on a system.

Thanks for the summary. With that information, I have located the utility
at:

<ftp://ftp.encompasserve.org/decus/vms/sig_tapes/vmslt00a/gce>

     2208 Mar 21 1994  fa.krf
    10154 Sep  2 1996  fa.man ! description
     5754 Sep  2 1996  fa.mms
    12142 May  5 1994  fa.ps
     4088 Sep  2 1996  fa.spd
   167211 Sep  8 1999  fa.zip

-- 
Paul Sture