find problem -- bad status

[Conor P. Cahill]

In article <569 at netmuc.UUCP> bothe at net7.uucp writes:
>
>  [description of how find(1) has a problem with remote file systems]
>  [when the remote system is down deleted]
>
>It seems a very serios bug, because the result of find is unpredictable !!!

No this is not a bug in find. Find should stop when it comes to a read
error on a directory/file.  A read error is a very bad thing and you shouldn't
keep running when you run into one.

The problem here is your configuration. Apparently your current configuration
is to soft mount NFS file systems onto the local machine.  Due to the fact
that your remote system can be down you should do one of the following:

	1. Hard mount your NFS file systems.  This will cause the find to wait
	   until the remote system comes back up before continuing.

	2. Unmount the NFS file systems before the remote system is taken 
	   down.

	3. Write a small test script/program with a timeout that verifies that
	   the NFS file system is up & available before you start the find and
	   change the find directory specifications accordingly.

	4. Arrange the find directory list so that the NFS file systems are
	   listed last, so that if the remote system is down you won't loose
	   any local files from the find output.

Of course, only the first option will correctly handle the case where the
remote file system goes down in the middle of the find.

Another option would be to write your own find with appropriate timeouts
whenever reading data from the disk, but who has the time?


-- 
Conor P. Cahill            (703)430-9247        Virtual Technologies, Inc.,
uunet!virtech!cpcahil                           46030 Manekin Plaza, Suite 160
                                                Sterling, VA 22170