Long file names for ESIX
Chin Fang
fangchin at elaine41.stanford.edu
Wed Nov 28 17:18:25 AEST 1990
Hi everyone,
After I saw the posting from Jeff of ESIX tech support, I immediately decided
to give it a try. The following are a list of problems that I have encoutered
and some new discoveries that I have found along the way. Before I go on,
I would like to invite other ESIX users sharing your experience. If anyone
has succeded, please post.
My motivation is very simple, Stanford's unix machines are all Berkeley type,
so every now and then when I do file (src in particular), you can imagine my
trouble of shortening file names.
First, problems:
1. the -sysv switch no longer the controlling switch for SysV format or
Berkeley long file name format (255 char.) Another ESIX user Mr. Yergeau
of EE Department also found that out and informed me too.
2. The controlling switch turns out to be the -S switch for /etc/ffs/mkfs.
The way to tell is invoking /etc/ffs/newfs -v -N /dev/rdsk/0s0 and you
will immediately see /etc/ffs/mkfs -S -N -R 4 even though in release notes
and the usuage output from newfs to stdout /etc/ffs/mkfs is mentioned as
default, it IS NOT!
3. I don't see a way to prevent /etc/ffs/newfs from invoking /etc/ffs/mkfs
without the -S switch.
4. My machine, a 3 year old 20 Mhz 386 with 8 megs mem and 387, would trash
the boot sector of a floppy whenever I mount it to be both rw. So what I
did was to use gnu emacs 18.55 reading in dd image of both the first and 2nd
boot disk, edit out the -sysv switch from INSTALL from the dd image of the
1st boot disk, and -S from the dd image of the 2nd boot disk, and then
dd them back to back up floppies.
5. Using back up floppies thus created, I could finish the first two floppies
without any symptoms. However, after prompted reboot the system, I didn't
get the familar "Are you installing from tape" prompt, instead, my machine
kept booting itself after each memory parity check. I did once quick
recovery reinstallation, NO use!
6. I installed the normal 14 char ESIX FFS, and used emacs to edit
/etc/ffs/newfs on the hd, overwrote the -S switch in the binary file with
blanks, and tried to use it to rebuild a file system for /usr. Either I
did something wrong or other things I did not know about, the entire
ESIX system installed on my hd became non-functional. ( I got a panic and
memory dump right after I did the file system manual rebuild).
7. ESIX release notes and what I found from playing with the two utilities
are not totally consistent. ie. Doc says one thing, the utilities do another
if you poking into the binary using a binary editor or emacs, you will agree
with me even more. So obviously, after Mike Bert(? the gentleman who
implemented Berkeley FFS for ESIX and left to join Unisys not long ago)
someone at ESIX must have changed the entire file system code without
proper doc the mods.
Well, I pretty much said my discoveries in the problem section. So I will stop
here. I am out of ideas to try now. It would be very helpful if people who
have rebuilt the true Berkeley FFS on their primary hds come out and share
their experience. I hope the above info could be useful if no one have ever
attempted so far. I also would like to acknowledge three persons for their
info: Mr. Dan Yergeau of Stanford's EE Department, he gave me most of the hints
Jeff Eliss and Jeff Row of ESIX Tech Support, their info is out of date
but their friendly and helpful attatitude never changes.
Chin Fang
Mechanical Engineering Department
Stanford University
fangchin at portia.stanford.edu
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