[Info-vax] Long uptime cut short by Hurricane Sandy

[Simon Clubley]

On 2013-02-02, Paul Sture <nospam at sture.ch> wrote:
> In article <kegcqk$nke$2 at dont-email.me>,
>  Simon Clubley <clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> wrote:
>
>> From the man page on the RHEL clone box I am currently using:
>> 
>> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> NAME
>>        rename - Rename files
>
> ...
>
>
>> 
>> SEE ALSO
>>        mmv(1), mv(1)
>> 
>>                                 1 January 2000                       RENAME(1)
>> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> What is mmv?  I don't have it anywhere here.
>

I don't know; I don't have it installed either.

However, looking around I did find this discussion:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/417916/how-to-do-a-mass-rename

> The OS X version of 'man rename' gives help on the BSD system call 
> 'rename'; the utility itself does not exist.
>
> There's an interesting caveat section:
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> CAVEATS
> The system can deadlock if a loop is present in the file system graph.
> This loop takes the form of an entry in directory `a', say `a/foo', being
> a hard link to directory `b', and an entry in directory `b', say `b/bar',
> being a hard link to directory `a'.  When such a loop exists and two sep-
> arate processes attempt to perform `rename a/foo b/bar' and `rename b/bar
> a/foo', respectively, the system may deadlock attempting to lock both
> directories for modification.
>

[snip caveat]

Ouch! :-)

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world