Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!decwrl!world!geoff
From: geoff@world.std.com (Geoff Collyer)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: i-nodes and Cnews (really pre-SVR4 and C News)
Message-ID: <1991Apr9.211906.20833@world.std.com>
Date: 9 Apr 91 21:19:06 GMT
References: <1991Apr7.194503.22015@techbook.com> <1991Apr8.203030.7210@world.std.com> <1991Apr9.164220.13618@cs.utk.edu>
Organization: Software Tool & Die Netnews Research Center
Lines: 28

Whoa, Dave, let's back up.  The original query was from someone on a
system that lacks symbolic links or any file system type that can support
over 64k inodes per file system (e.g. V7 or pre-SVR4 System V).  He wants
to keep more than 64k news articles on-line at a time.

Traditionally, crossposted articles have been stored as a single file
with multiple links (e.g. "Newsgroups:
comp.unix.wizards,comp.unix.internals" causes an article to be stored as
a file with two links:  /usr/spool/news/comp/unix/wizards/123456 and
/usr/spool/news/comp/unix/internals/324516).  This saves space compared
to making copies.

If C News can't make the necessary (hard) links, it will make symbolic
links instead, on systems that have them (e.g. SVR4, 4BSD, Eunice).  So
on a system that has small i-numbers (typically two bytes) but does have
symbolic links (e.g. V8), one can just mount other file system(s) in
appropriate places (e.g. under /usr/spool/news, or elsewhere with
symbolic links from under /usr/spool/news).  expire -l causes expire to
remove the lexically-first file name only when it is ready to remove the
last of the file names for a given article, since all names but the first
may be symbolic links in such circumstances.

Making copies rather than links wastes space but permits one to use
multiple file systems for /usr/spool/news on systems that lack symbolic
links (or indeed to deal with crossposted articles on systems that lack
any form of links).  This is in the works.
-- 
Geoff Collyer		world.std.com!geoff, uunet.uu.net!geoff