Re: [Sheflug] listing sizes of directories..

[Alex Hudson <nospam [at] id-pro.co.uk>]

"Stephen J. Turnbull" wrote:
>     Al> Broke in terms of what? Size? Looks okay to me.... datestamp,
>     Al> well, maybe.
> 
> No.  The datestamp is wrong, and mounted filesystems should be rooted
> in directories.  The number of links shown is anomolous, too.  I
> wouldn't be surprised if a chown failed, since root.root = 0.0, a very
> popular value in that listing.  What happens if you cd there?  Can you
> find your way back?  <shudder>

The datestamp doesn't always mean a great deal, in terms of the local
system. NFS exports datestamp over network, doesn't it? You can have
directories with datestamps before the installation date, etc. Perhaps
they've used the base date for some reason; other than just lazy date=0
somewhere ;)

>     Al> Linus was right about what? devfs?
> 
> Yes.  Put it back in the oven, please, and cook until the puddle in
> the middle turns to cake.

I'm afraid I'm a convert ;)

> The point of having a virtual filesystem is that it should have
> filesystem semantics so that you can use fileutils on it.  You're
> precisely right about the size, but the size of a filesystem object is
> somewhat ill-defined even on a physical hard drive -- what is the size
> of a sparse file? the size of a file on an automatically compressed
> file system? is it the resources used, or the amount of data that can
> be read before EOF?  The other things in a directory listing have
> well-defined semantics.

A virtual filesystem isn't fixed, though, so theoretically it can have
infinite size, infinite numbers of links, all sorts of oddities, and the
semantics don't quite carry, I don't think. Such as datestamp.. what
should it be? Date last modified? Date last accessed? Date last updated?
The information in /proc is never out of date (i.e., it's always
current), thus the datestamp is 'now'. If it can never change, maybe
'zero' is correct? Dunno...

> If you want other semantics, fine, but don't call it a filesystem
> then.  What's wrong with COM0:, D:, and ETH0:, anyway?  ;-)

Plan9 users would probably have well rehearsed arguments, myself, I
don't really care ;))

-- 
Alex Hudson <hudson [at] ID-PRO.co.uk> * Open Source I.T. 
* ID-PRO UK Ltd. * 1 Benjamin Street * London EC1M 5QG 
* Tel. +44 (0) 20 7689 8448 * Fax +44 (0) 20 7689 8242
* http://www.id-pro.co.uk/
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Sheffield Linux User's Group - http://www.sheflug.co.uk
To unsubscribe from this list send mail to
- <sheflug-request [at] vuw.ac.nz> - with the word 
 "unsubscribe" in the body of the message. 

  GNU the choice of a complete generation.