ITP: leafnode

[Nicholas Wourms]

alper wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 02, 2004 at 04:17:16PM +0200, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
> 
>>>1. Leafnode relies on hard-link counts, so current implementation of hlinks 
>>>on FAT32 breaks it. News spool has to be on NTFS, and it seems this will be 
>>>an NT/2K/XP only package.
>>
>>Is that necessary?  Can't that be ifdef'd for Cygwin?
>>
> 
> 
> I've discussed this before with leafnode maintainer, Matthias Andree, and 
> here's what he says:
> 
> <quote>
> The whole /var/spool/news/* organization relies on hard links.
> 
> The expire process relies on the hard link count (st_nlink in struct
> stat, as in the <sys/stat.h> header file and returned by the stat()
> syscall) being correct, file copies on FAT32 will lead to premature expiry 
> and a horrible waste of disk space, it may become unbearable for 
> cross-posted articles.
> </quote>
> 

To diverge, and I know Corinna will tell me to submit a patch, but I 
think the problem this raises is worth discussing.  Even if we are using 
NT/2k/XP/2k3, we still could be using fat32 filesystem.  So, another 
approach to fix this problem would be to extend the "managed" mount api. 
  That is, put Cygwin in charge of maintaining an internal accounting of 
hard links which is agnostic to the filesystem being used.  U/Win has 
had this approach for years now, so we know its possible.  Of course, it 
be nice if old man Korn would let us see the source ;-).  Just a thought.

As for the package, I tend to agree with Corinna.  I don't think we 
should be packaging nt-only packages unless absolutely necessary.

Cheers,
Nicholas