[Info-vax] Is there a way to enabling versioning in Samba

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2017-07-26 09:16:13 +0000, Dirk Munk said:

> By the way, NTFS is regarded by some as a Files 11 version. It seems 
> there are some hardly used well hidden possibilities in NTFS that would 
> allow some kind of versions, but don't ask me how.

When using existing... Windows File History (Vista and later, though 
with a different name on Vista), or a decent add-on backup tool.     
The Windows File History mechanism is the user interface for the NTFS 
Volume Shadow Copy service, and which is what you're probably recalling 
here.     Dropbox and other services can provide a way to recover from 
file changes short of timed backups or other such, as can WebDAV with 
SVN.  Or for other apps, tools or IDEs that integrate with a DVCS or 
VCS, or that don't use logs but rather one of the distributed logging 
implementations.

When designing new... Microsoft Windows is probably not the best place 
to look for inspiration, at least in this particular area.   For 
versioning and backups, maybe macOS.  For a newer take on a file system 
and shadowing and snapshots, ZFS.  Also with the consideration toward 
the migration from HDD to flash-based or nonvolatile RAM; to 
byte-addressable storage.   For the implementation and presentation, a 
FUSE layer allows much easier integration of local and remote file 
system clients, and of an add-on VCS-based presentation, and of 
potentially accessing a variety of other file systems akin to some 
combination of LD and the EXCHANGE utility.

As for OpenVMS new...  We'll eventually learn what VSI VAFS will 
provide.  Undoubtedly versions and 64-bit and volume shadowing support. 
  Hopefully also with disk partitioning and encryption.  Some of the 
ZFS-like capabilities for backups and snapshots would be really handy.  
 Given the reported age of the VAFS design, it'll probably be optimized 
for HDD and not for newer storage.

File versions on OpenVMS are a nice idea, but they're lacking around 
delta storage, ongoing maintenance and purging, around version limits, 
around coordinating changes across multiple files as arises when 
misused as a VCS, and they're a slog when implementing directory 
traversal or implementing file shares.  They certainly do work, but 
they can also be so much better.

Lots of ways to do file versioning, and to do it better than or 
differently than what OpenVMS offers.


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