Re: [MiNT] re Martin Eric racine, Guido Leaving?

[Martin-Eric Racine <q-funk@pp.fishpool.com>]

Hallo Frank!

> > Have you tried copying multiple files accross partitions or filesystems
> > such as, minix to minix, minix to vfat....  _That_ is where it chokes
> > the kernel's cache.  Within one partition, no problem.  _NOT_ accross.
> 
> Every filesystem access over the new drivers chokes the buffer cache from 
> kernel.

Btw, choke = block, as in, when writing many files the whole kernel is
paused between inode writing batches.  In fact, not just the kernel, but -
I suspect - every interrupt is put on hold until the next batch of inodes
strored in the cache is written.  This freezes the system completely and
only corrects itself only _after_ the cache is emptied.

But, if you that it's okay for the whole OS to halt between cache
emptying, well....

> > cp -au /e/some/dir/with/500/files/or/more/*  /f/new/place/on/other/drive/
> 
> I played a little bit with cp. Do you also tested any other copy program?

Yes, with Thing 1.27 also.   Same problem (worse, actually because then 
Thing cannot update its dialog box to report the next file it copies
until _after_ it has been copied).
 
> It seems that cp is your problem. cp report a bus error to me if I will 
> copy lot of files (the bus error only occurs with memory protection 
> enabled).

Without memory protection also.

> It's a stack problem. After increasing the stack size of cp it copies all 
> files fine (stacksize = 0 isn't enough, I set it to 64k).

No, it doesn't.  Example:  yesterday, I had about 200 files I was
transfering from 5 floppies to Minix.  Minix crashed and took Thing
with itself...

The stack increase only fixes how many files CP can handle.  It does _not_
prevent Minix or the kernel's cache (it's still unclear to me which one is
the source of the problem) from crashing the system when copying several
files accross filesystems or partitions.

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Martin-Eric Racine       http://www.pp.fishpool.com/~q-funk/M-E/
The Atari TT030 Homepage   http://www.megacom.net/~q-funk/TT030/
New MiNT Distribution   http://members.tripod.com/~TT030/nmd.htm
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