Norton Utilities vs. "the way things are"

[Marc Roussel]

In article <453 at bria> uunet!bria!mike writes:
>My flame was not attacking the _concept_ of undeletion.  My objection to NU
>was the way that it was done (hooking onto the operating system, and munging
>with calls like statfs() so that they lie about the _true_ state of things).
>It's nothing but a kludge.  The ability to undelete files should be a
>capability of the kernel and underlying filesystem, not some external hack.

AT&T hasn't done it.  Berkeley's kernel doesn't support undeletion.  If
people want this feature, they'll obviously have to look somewhere
else.

>If you are an accountant (and many of the poeple that I work with are), then
>your needs _are_ important to me.  My job is to make sure that if something
>gets in your way, I remove it.  _I_ am the admin, _you_ are the end user.
>I will administer, you will use.  'Nuff said.

In many university departments, the lines aren't that wonderfully clear.
Thankfully, in this department we can afford a sys admin and I am more
than glad to let Mike to his job.  A lot of departments can't afford a
system administrator though, and I'm sure a lot of small businesses are
like that too.  Someone has to wear two hats.  Unix is ideally suited to
small networks and people are buying it in recognition of this fact.  If
however it turns out that Unix is an expensive system to run because you
have to hire a system administrator (or make heavy use of consultants),
Unix won't last long in the smallish systems arena.

>There should be the ability for a user
>to recover deleted files.  My point is that it should be a function of
>the kernel, and not an external kludge. 
>
>Should I compare methodology, I would much prefer a tool that goes hunting
>through the freelist and recovering only part of my file, rather than
>Pete Norton sticking his fingers in my kernel.

Now you're not even making sense.  Norton quite reasonably implements
undeletion in the kernel (through a kernel patch), the approach which
you favour, and yet you object to "Norton sticking his fingers in my kernel".
Sheesh!

                                Sincerely,

				Marc R. Roussel
                                mroussel at alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca