Lispm vs Unix file servers

[barmar@Think.COM]

   Date: Wed, 8 Aug 90 18:05 EDT
   From: PTW@JASPER.SCRC.Symbolics.COM (P. T. Withington)

   My point was that if you're using NFS you're probably trying to
   interoperate with Unix, not just use it as a place to hold bits.  

In a .sct hierarchy, that assumption is probably wrong.  No Unix programs I
know of can deal with directories where all the files have ~version~
suffixes.  Note that the original complaint was about such a directory,
since he's trying to use it to hold files in a system.

By the way, if Symbolics NFS is supposed to be compatible with GNU Emacs's
versioning convention, how come it doesn't create "foo~" files?  It goes
straight from "foo" to "foo.~version~".  This is a pretty annoying
incompatibility.

								     In
   that case, you are pretty much stuck with Unix's limitations.  If you
   don't need the Unix interoperability, then creating a LMFS partition is
   the solution.

Unix systems are generally better file servers than Lispms are.  Fsck is
infinitely faster than the LMFS salvager, and Unix is able to use alternate
tracks automatically.  Performance on Unix systems with many disks can be
better because most Unix systems support multiple disk controllers, which
can be operated concurrently.

The *only* advantage of Lispm file servers is the additional file
attributes and the user-extensible property list.