Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!steinmetz!davidsen
From: davidsen@steinmetz.ge.com (William E. Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: bad filenames
Message-ID: <10894@steinmetz.ge.com>
Date: 18 May 88 20:40:58 GMT
References: <14418@brl-adm.ARPA> <20800@think.UUCP>
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen)
Organization: General Electric CRD, Schenectady, NY
Lines: 25

In article <20800@think.UUCP> barmar@kulla.think.com.UUCP (Barry Margolin) writes:
| In article <14418@brl-adm.ARPA> rbj@icst-cmr.arpa (Root Boy Jim) writes:
| >   From: David Goodenough <dg@lakart.uucp>
| >   Since this is a UNIX (tm) group I'm going to ask "how was a file with a '/'
| >   in it's name created?" I *_CANT_* do it here (BSD 4.3).
| >
| >By a stray neutrino zapping the directory entry.

  Since I posted the original question (and have lots of comments but no
answers) I will note that someone with root access was trying to open
the dir file and treat it as a database, building an index file by <lots
of things>. They blewitt.

| If you use memory and disk without ECC, you deserve to lose this way.
| (Unfortunately, I think most personal computers don't have any memory
| ECC -- users of A/UX should flame heavily at Apple about this.)

  Given the low frequency of errors, error detection via parity seems to
work adequately. If I remember correctly, an ECC code for a byte takes 4
bits extra (!), and for four bytes as a unit 6. I don't know how aux
does it, but the PCs have one parity per byte.
-- 
	bill davidsen		(wedu@ge-crd.arpa)
  {uunet | philabs | seismo}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me