From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!npoiv!npois!houxm!houxa!houxi!houxz!hocda!spanky!ka
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
Title: Re: why squish?
Article-I.D.: spanky.145
Posted: Mon Jan  3 00:37:01 1983
Received: Mon Jan  3 03:25:47 1983
References: linus.1512

I had been hoping to stay clear of this discussion, but the arti-
cle by linus!smk has finally goaded me into a response.

		Those of you who use tar/cpio to do the same thing
	will run into trouble if you don't have enough space to hold
	a copy of the hierachy you want to move.

Tar has this problem, but not cpio.  The command sequence is:
	cd dir
	mkdir ../tempdir
	find . -print | cpio -pdl ../tempdir
	cd ..
	rm -r dir
	mv tempdir dir
The -l option causes cpio to simply link the  files  rather  than
copying them.

		Squish is more general purpose and works (recursively
	if you want) on directories not containing a mountable file
	system.

So does cpio.

		Both squish and uusquish have problems when someone happens
	to be in the hierarchy you are dealing with, so the best bet
	is to run them right after the mounts (and cleanups) in /etc/rc.
	For this reason, I would like to see a squish system call.

Please!  A conscious effort was made in designing  UNIX  to  keep
the  number  of system calls to a minimum.  Surely you can get by
with running squish only when you back up the  system.   If  not,
the solution is to redesign the way UNIX directory system so squ-
ish is unnecessary, NOT to clutter up UNIX  with  another  system
call.

		Mkdir suffers the similar problems to squish.  If you
	kill it at the right moment, the directory is made without the
	. and .. entries.  This should be a kernel function also.

My feelings about adding another system  call  are  given  above.
Also,  in  System  III  there is no way to kill mkdir (which runs
suid) unless you are root.
					Kenneth Almquist