Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site brl-tgr.ARPA Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!think!harvard!seismo!brl-tgr!gwyn From: gwyn@brl-tgr.ARPA (Doug Gwyn) Newsgroups: net.unix Subject: Re: file archiving Message-ID: <715@brl-tgr.ARPA> Date: Thu, 15-Aug-85 05:44:24 EDT Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.715 Posted: Thu Aug 15 05:44:24 1985 Date-Received: Sun, 18-Aug-85 04:52:24 EDT References: <445@brl-tgr.ARPA> <49600006@convexs> Organization: Ballistic Research Lab Lines: 16 > I hope you're doing this single user! Otherwise, it seems like you'd > run the risk of having race conditions with someone updating files while > you're doing the archiving/deleting. Perhaps not all that likely, but > Murphy's been working overtime here lately. I know of no way to avoid that possibility, other than as you say being single-user. The only danger in the race would be that a file being updated might get put on the tape then removed, so that the archival copy would be corrupted. You will note that I did make a single temp file containing the names and used it for both archiving and deleting, to make sure that nothing could get deleted that wasn't on the tape. (I forgot to say that one should remove this temp file (list of filenames) when he is done; presumably if one does this activity on a regular basis he would want to keep the file list on-line so that one could easily find which tape had the deleted file that one later needs restored.)