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Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84 SMI; site sun.uucp
Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!decwrl!sun!guy
From: guy@sun.uucp (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: net.rumor
Subject: Re: Computer Horror Stories
Message-ID: <3313@sun.uucp>
Date: Sun, 2-Mar-86 23:18:04 EST
Article-I.D.: sun.3313
Posted: Sun Mar  2 23:18:04 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 4-Mar-86 04:23:21 EST
References: <1215@brl-smoke.ARPA> <5027@alice.uUCp> <366@ucbjade.BERKELEY.EDU> <143@simon_pc.UUCP> <544@scgvaxd.UUCP>
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Lines: 26

> ...VMS marks the disk for dismount but doesn't dismount it 'cause it's got
> a file open on it.  Close the last file and it'll dismount oh-so-gracefully.
> ...I suppose you'd rather have it mung the filesystem 'cause fsck is so
> exciting to run?

Ahem.  If this was intended as a slam against UNIX, it's misdirected.  UNIX
will refuse to dismount a file system which has open files on it.  (Locally
opened, anyway; since Sun's NFS is stateless, a machine doesn't know whether
anybody on another machine has files opened on a given file system, and will
let you dismount that file system.  Then again, since Sun's NFS is
stateless, the only effect of that is to cause all subsequent I/O to that
file system to get "Stale file handle" errors; the file system isn't
corrupted, although if the program's response to such an error isn't to ask
that the file system be remounted and keep trying the operation - if the
file system is remounted, one of the retries will succeed and the program
can take up where it left off - the file it's working on could become
corrupted.)

Now that we've corrected all errors in these postings, shall we return to
posting true horror stories?  (Which may not, strictly speaking, be rumors,
but are quite entertaining nonetheless; as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "A
foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.")
-- 
	Guy Harris
	{ihnp4, decvax, seismo, decwrl, ...}!sun!guy
	guy@sun.arpa	(yes, really)