From owner-freebsd-fs Thu Apr 26 11:10:14 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org Received: from fw.wintelcom.net (ns1.wintelcom.net [209.1.153.20]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B51A337B422; Thu, 26 Apr 2001 11:10:11 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from bright@fw.wintelcom.net) Received: (from bright@localhost) by fw.wintelcom.net (8.10.0/8.10.0) id f3QIABe03751; Thu, 26 Apr 2001 11:10:11 -0700 (PDT) Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2001 11:10:11 -0700 From: Alfred Perlstein To: Terry Lambert Cc: mckusick@FreeBSD.ORG, fs@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: versioned files via snapshot evilness. Message-ID: <20010426111010.M18676@fw.wintelcom.net> References: <20010426093439.J18676@fw.wintelcom.net> <200104261749.KAA24236@usr05.primenet.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: <200104261749.KAA24236@usr05.primenet.com>; from tlambert@primenet.com on Thu, Apr 26, 2001 at 05:49:33PM +0000 X-all-your-base: are belong to us. Sender: owner-freebsd-fs@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org * Terry Lambert [010426 10:46] wrote: > > I'm wondering if it might be possible to abuse the ffs snapshot > > stuff to do file versioning ala VMS. > > Not really, IMO. > > Versioning ala VMS requires kernel globbing, or amazingly > intrusive library modifications, coupled with a guarantee > by programmers that they will only use the preferred APIs > in their applications. > > Consider how you would make: > > fd = open( "foo", O_RDWR, 0); > > open version 17 of the file "foo", as opposed to an earlier version, > and how you would tag versions into the file names, without stealing > a character (e.g. ";"). Also note that "/" is valid in a UTF-8 > filename today, if it is part of a multibyte sequence (but FreeBSD > can not handle this). It would be nice if "foo" was the "HEAD" version of the file and each new open for write _could_ cause a foo;#ver or something to be created. I was asking more to find out the capabilities that snapshots brings versus the pre-existing limitations in the namespace code currently in place. More, can we snapshot individual files? -- -Alfred Perlstein - [alfred@freebsd.org] Represent yourself, show up at BABUG http://www.babug.org/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-fs" in the body of the message