Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!nrl-cmf!cmcl2!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Why Partition a Hard Disk
Message-ID: <8424@smoke.ARPA>
Date: 3 Sep 88 03:13:07 GMT
References: <4360004@wdl1.UUCP> <1988Aug31.174144.1694@utzoo.uucp> <66800@sun.uucp>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 14

In article <66800@sun.uucp> guy@gorodish.Sun.COM (Guy Harris) writes:
>Yes, changing the "stat" structure may be painful.  Not changing it may be
>painful as well....

A reasonable way to make the change is to introduce a new system call,
which acts the way one wants (e.g. long st_ino), change the C library
stat() interface to use the new system call (and change the stat.h
header at the same time!), then recompile and test all the system
software at one's leisure.  Old binaries keep working until one is
finished checking everything out and removes the old system call (if
ever; usually it is left enabled so customers don't have to recompile
anything).  Old binaries can fail on long inode numbers, but this is
no worse than not making the change, and at least the official system
software has been upgraded to work right.