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Re: Problems with Big hfvs



>>>>> "James" == James Scott <jes23@hermes.cam.ac.uk> writes:

    James> I had a problem with a big (230 Mb) hfv I made in order to
    James> back up my macs hard disk. It worked fine until it was
    James> about 190 Mb full, and then every time I copied a file to
    James> it a GP fault occurred. When I went back into executor, the
    James> copied file was corrupt, in that I couldn't move it, delete
    James> it or access it. Wierd things happened when I deleted the
    James> directory containing it. Delete gave an error of the
    James> Abort/Continue style, and after I had aborted it was still
    James> there, but when I opened it it contained its parent
    James> directory. After a few minutes of playing in this way, I
    James> had completely messed up the volume! Reading and writing to
    James> my 'real' 240Mb mac hard disk gave no problems. Eventually,
    James> I backed up by making two smaller hfvs and had no
    James> problems. Somewhere I have the exception tracebacks and
    James> error numbers, which I can send if you want, together with
    James> details of my machine.

The most important thing we need to know is which version of Executor
this happened with and what arguments you supplied to "makehfv".

    James> While I'm here a few points I noticed about the browser and
    James> the filesystem.

    James> 1. An apple-d key to delete a file (or even a trashcan)
    James> would be very handy.

Selecting a file or folder and hitting the delete key (not the
backspace key) will ask you if you want to delete the file or folder,
then you can hit <CR> and it will be done.

    James> 2. The ability to select multiple folders for
    James> copy/move/delete operations would be good.

Yes, but it won't be in Executor 2 -- we have too many other nits to
work out, first.

    James> 3. When you copy a big folder (about 100 or more files in
    James> it), there is a long delay before copying starts. And if
    James> you're copying small files, it seems to be much slower than
    James> copying the equivalent amount of data in big files. On a
    James> mac, these operations seem to happen quite efficiently.

Executor is rather paranoid about writing to the disk, so it flushes
cached information more often than a real Mac does.  Specifically it
flushes information every time a file is closed.  So lots of little
files result in lots of flushes.  We may change this in the future.

    James> I can see that all of this might not be high on your list
    James> of priorities, but here it is all the same!

Yes, we still appreciate suggestions and feedback even when we can't
immediately act on them.

    James> James Scott

--Cliff
ctm@ardi.com


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