... how do you copy in/out from HFS disks?

[John Gilmore]

phil at Apple.COM (Phil Ronzone) wrote:
> Last - to be specific, and to see if we have left anything out, what
> do Y'ALL want in an A/UX <-> HFS transfer utility?

Full compatability.  The user should not care whether their data is
stored in an HFS or an A/UX format file system, same way they don't
care if the data is stored in Berkeley or Sys V file system format.  I
should be able to have all my HFS hard disk partitions and floppies
"mounted" on my A/UX box, exported via NFS, etc.  It might as well use
the AppleDouble format for Unix access, since Unix utilities for
manipulating Mac files are already used to this.  In other words, if
a Mac program called "foo" was in the system folder called "system",
I should be able to see "/mnt/system/foo" and /mnt/system/%foo" when I
do "ls" from Unix.  The usual way to implement this is with a "MacOS"
filesystem type under the vnode switch in the kernel.

On the MacOS end, of course, it should look the same:  full access to
Unix filesystems stored on local SCSI disks, via AppleDouble.  Why should
a MacOS program be able to access Unix files on remote disks, while
not being able to access Unix files on its own local disk?

One thing I do not want to see is a "rcp" model of program, where you
end up copying the stuff around with funny commands.  Another thing
I don't want to see is a fancy screen oriented puff piece for doing
this kind of stuff.  It should be built right in, so it works for all
applications -- the sharp pointy clicky kind as well as the command line
oriented kind.

If you mount a floppy, it should of course flush the buffer and inode
caches when the floppy is changed, so you can pop 'em in and out at will.

By the way Sun Consulting sells something that does this for MSDOS SCSI
disks attached to Suns, and I presume it's in the 386i as well.  (You
don't get access to local Unix disks from MSDOS, but then again Sun
didn't write MSDOS the way Apple wrote the MacOS.  Apple has the power
to fix this, Sun didn't.)
-- 
John Gilmore  {sun,pacbell,uunet,pyramid,ihnp4}!hoptoad!gnu        gnu at toad.com
"Use the Source, Luke...."