Rm using .# (recap) and some further thoughts.
John 'tms' Navarra
navarra at casbah.acns.nwu.edu
Fri May 10 09:41:10 AEST 1991
In article <1991May9.191652.26724 at athena.mit.edu> jik at athena.mit.edu (Jonathan I. Kamens) writes:
>In article <1991May9.025448.25243 at casbah.acns.nwu.edu>, navarra at casbah.acns.nwu.edu (John 'tms' Navarra) writes:
>|> 1) Rm .# does not support users naming files .# anything because they
>|> would subsequently be deleted.
>
> The convention of files beginning with .# being temporary and purge-able by
>the system is far older than Project Athena's "delete" package. Vendors have
>been shipping systems that search for and delete old .# files by default for
>many years, just as they search for and delete # files, ~ files, and in some
>cases a.out and core files.
>
> You would do well to learn a bit more about the history of Unix and its
>current variants before you go around declaring that something both old and
>common in Unix is "TOTALLY un-standard" and "a non-standard restriction on
>many computers."
One guy mentioned emacs -- what about people who use vi? My Sun
systems stores some temporary mail files in a # form but MANY new systems
do not use this .# technology!
>
>
>|> 3) Rm .# files do not hide from ls -a commands. Despite what Jon has
>|> said, i don't think this command is all that uncommon.
>
> Well, then, we'll have to agree to disagree. I have both "rm" and "rmdir"
>aliased to delete in my account, and I know a lot of hacker-types (the people
>who are most likely to use "ls -a") at Athena who do the same, and I have
>never heard this complaint before. If you think it's more of a problem than I
>do, there is nothing I can do about that.
>
>|> 4) This problem of deleting large numbers of files brings up a quota
>|> issue. Many systems have quotas for its users and deleting files
>|> to the current dir still adds onto the quota. It is possible to
>|> discount .# files (I think) but why bother if you can just move them
>|> to a different dir without a quota or one considerably larger that
>|> is not affliated with yours.
>
> As I have pointed out in a previous posting, allowing users to delete files
>into a repository without a quota, and then to restore them, allows users to
>use the deleted-file space as a temporary file archive, unless it is
>constantly watched by the admins to make sure that this does not happen.
What is stopping people from storing a bunch of stuff in /tmp? That
doesn't normally get cleared unless the machine is rebooted.
I never said that a user should be allowed to have an unlimited quota on
a trashcan directory. Entomb is owned by charon and you can always supply
a quota on a person's tomb directory so they cannot delete large numbers of
files. You can't do that if you delete files to your home dir.
My system has a 1meg quota. I think this really sucks. If I want to get the
new version of bash and uncompress and untar it, it takes up alot of space
and I don't have much room for much else. But if I must deal with a quota
at least I could keep bash on my system for a few days before it was deleted
if i use entomb.
>
>
> You would do well to actually look at our software, which is available in
>comp.sources.misc, before making up scenarios that might break it.
>
>% alias rm
>delete
>% alias rmdir
>delete
>% cd tmp
>% ls
>file1 file2 file3
>% rm *
>% cd ..
>% rmdir tmp
>%
>
>In other words, if delete is used as it is intended to be used, replacing both
>rm and rmdir, it does the right thing in the scenario you described.
so this is what you are telling me if I want to use undelete:
1) I have to put up with .# files
2) I have to make some alias for ls -a so I don't see .# files
3) I still have to wait around if I delete large numbers of files and want
to do an ls -a because the dir is huge.
4) I have to make rm and rmdir aliases to insure it works right.
5) I have to run a cron job every night to hunt down these files.
6) I have to put up with the quota restrictions.
7) if I really want to delete a file I have to use another command so the
stupid .# file is not in my directory. (which is the normal case!)
and for the big one:
8) I actually have to be an experienced enough user to be able to make all
these corrections -- otherwise I could get quite confused in certain
instances -- whereas if I used entomb, whether I had knowledge of how it
worked or not, my daily operations would not be affected.
if that is what you are telling me, then I say IT's STUPID!
>
>
>--
>Jonathan Kamens USnail:
>MIT Project Athena 11 Ashford Terrace
>jik at Athena.MIT.EDU Allston, MA 02134
>Office: 617-253-8085 Home: 617-782-0710
--
>From the Lab of the MaD ScIenTiST:
navarra at casbah.acns.nwu.edu
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