Newsgroups: news.software.b
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Inode limitation of news software
Message-ID: <1991Mar4.225144.25820@zoo.toronto.edu>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <1991Mar03.111942.12658@gold.sub.org>
Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1991 22:51:44 GMT

In article <1991Mar03.111942.12658@gold.sub.org> root@gold.sub.org (Christian Seyb) writes:
>This is not possible, due to the limitation of <64k inodes (at least on
>sysv).
>
>Is there anybody out there who has solved this problem?

Well, 4.2BSD did...

>Having a database for every newsgroup would reduce the number of files
>to a managable quantity. Of course, the newsreaders and the utilities
>need to understand this as well. Has this been implemented so far?

This has been talked about frequently, but as far as I'm aware nobody has
yet done it.  Revising the format of the article storage is a terrible
job unless you allow *only* NNTP access (which has its own drawbacks)
because so many things know about it.

While I sympathize with people who are stuck with old systems, I don't
think this is a very good reason to run off and implement a database
system, especially given how painful the transition would be.  When you
start spending vast amounts of time, effort, and pain working around
limitations of the underlying system, it is time to upgrade said system.
-- 
"But this *is* the simplified version   | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
for the general public."     -S. Harris |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry
