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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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