Re: umsdos/uvfat

Martin von Loewis (martin@mira.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de)
Mon, 9 Feb 1998 10:45:48 +0100

> The problem isn't with vfat itself, the problem is with apps that
> think they know how to access the fs on a byte-by-byte level.
>
> There are only two catagories of things that should do that: the OS,
> and applications whose point it is to know that. This includes
> fsckers and defragmenters. It dosn't include virus scaners, word
> processors, disk editors, etc. (Disk editors don't need to know
> about fs formating, their users do.)

Unfortunately, these are exactly the applications that you would run
on such a system. If you run DOS and Linux, and you don't want to run
Win95, then you will most likely run all these crooked tools that we
have come to love over the last 15 years :-)

It is an end user requirement to be able to run these tools, and not
lose long Linux file names when doing so. As a developer, never argue
about end-user requirements.

I believe Alan Cox gave the right and final answer in that umsdos
discussion: umsdos is currently broken because nobody has fixed it,
not because the PTB decided it is a useless feature. If fixes arrive
before 2.2 is released, they will be integrated.

Regards,
Martin
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