Norton Go Home! We don't want you!
Kenneth Herron
kherron at ms.uky.edu
Tue Feb 19 06:58:54 AEST 1991
In article <466 at bria>:
>As I have previously stated, my beef with NU is that it
>"induces" the statfs() call to lie about the true number of free blocks
>on the machine. Norton is saving all of these; now, my application comes
>along and asks how much disk there is. The OS lies, saying there are 'x'
>free blocks, when there really is not. I start creating files, and
>*whoom* run out of real disk space...
_NO_YOU DON'T_. The whole purpose of this "lying" about free space is
that Norton will free the blocks on demand, so as far as a user can tell,
the space was never in use to begin with.
Stated another way: Norton's is using the free space on your hard disk
to save deleted files without making the space any less free; since it's
in the kernal it can do that. The blocks "used" by Norton's do not meet
the classical definition of in-use, since they're instantly freed upon
demand.
It think the basic question is: "Do you trust Peter Norton with your
kernal?" The same question can be asked about every third-party device
driver (including FAS, a public domain product yet!). It's just that
Norton's is a somewhat more unusual kernal add-in than most, and, like
others have said, it has the stink of DOS about it. I think I'm also
detecting a bit of power-user arrogance here, too...
--
Kenneth Herron kherron at ms.uky.edu
University of Kentucky (606) 257-2975
Department of Mathematics
"Never trust gimmicky gadgets" -- the Doctor
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