Subject: RE: append writes (con't)

From: "Noveck, Dave" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 13:46:32 -0800

> On Fri, Noveck, Dave wrote:

> > The question is whether multiple processes appending to a log file
> > belongs in that class.  I don't think it does.  That is why people
> > keep trying to solve it.  The problem isn't that it is an
> 
> "people" refers to customers or system vendors?

In this case, "people" refers to engineers, who work for system
vendors.  System vendors are usually corporations and not people, 
although I'm sure there are exceptions.
 
> 
> > esoteric feature that nobody wants.  It is that it is difficult
> > feature to implement.

---

From: Spencer Shepler <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 15:49:29 -0600

> although I'm sure there are exceptions.

So there must be a customer somewhere that wants this if engineers are
spending their time on this difficult problem.  It would be nice to
know about the customers and what they are attempting to accomplish.

-- 

- Spencer -

---

From: Trond Myklebust <[email-masked]>
Date: 16 Mar 2001 23:32:23 +0100

>>>>> " " == Spencer Shepler <[email-masked]> writes:

    >> > > The question is whether multiple processes appending to a
    >> > > log file belongs in that class.  I don't think it does.
    >> > > That is why people keep trying to solve it.  The problem
    >> > > isn't that it is an
    >> >
    >> vendors.  System vendors are usually corporations and not
    >> people, although I'm sure there are exceptions.

     > So there must be a customer somewhere that wants this if
     > engineers are spending their time on this difficult problem.
     > It would be nice to know about the customers and what they are
     > attempting to accomplish.

The only complaints I've ever seen about this was from somebody who
was running a farm of web-servers, and who wanted to merge the logs in
order to provide some 'real-time statistics', and was discovering the
hard way that Apache doesn't use locking to protect its log files.

Needless to say, we managed to solve his problem without any major
rewrites of the existing NFS protocols. ;-)

Cheers,
  Trond