SFS errors out of the blue

[ChrisH]

SFS works 100% fine for me, including IBrowse.  Anyone complaining about it probably was just unlucky and didn't have a backup.  That or their HD is bad...

I switch to SFS from PFS3, because PFS is *very* buggy with long file names, and I've never looked back.  I would *not* switch back to PFS, because it is no-longer supported, where-as SFS is.

[ChrisH]

It just gets even worse when SFS doesn't have proper repair tools. Once you've copied your data back and forth couple of times, each time being forced to reformat, I'd guess you might get a bit irritated.

I'm sorry, but when most people *don't* have that problem, I tend to believe that it is the user's computer that is at fault.  Be it hardware problems/incompatibilities, or hacks corrupting memory, or some other software that is interacting badly with SFS, etc.

I just think it is wrong to say "SFS is aweful, PFS is wonderful".  They both have good and bad points, and I have used both without problems.

Never had a single problem with long filenames, and I have lots of them.

I am talking about names that are (say) 100+ characters long, although anything over 32 was risky.  Any time I used excessively long files names, that file (if not the whole damn directory) became corrupt/unreadable (and once the entire partition was {bleep}ed).

I have used AFS, PFS, PFS2 & PFS3 :-)

[ChrisH]

Personally I know of single issue with PFS3: Delete large amount of data at once (say >4GB) and it throws up some warning requester and stops.

Ah, I had forgotten about that, and it is a real pain once you start having massive partitions.  Another reason to switch to SFS...

P.S.  PFS is supposed to be "atomic commit", but it apparently has a design flaw which means it isn't unless you have a 1Kb () block size.  Certainly I had occasionally had corrupted PFS partitions, although that could be down to memory corruption.

[ChrisH]

Weird, because the long file name corruption bug was 100% reproducible for me - and won't ever be fixed, because development was stopped years ago :-(

Probably best to say "Use whatever works for you".  SFS works for me, PFS works for you :-)  Just don't go condemning either system as irrevocably bugged, because clearly a lot of people don't have that problem.

[ChrisH]

Typically SFS seems to topple over when used a bit more heavily. Say, it isn't perhaps that typical to try to copy 100GB data to the partition at once.

Ouch.  I've only ever had about 2GB of Amiga files in any partition (mainly because backing-up was a right royal pain).

I would suggest discussing it with the current maintainer of SFS, but I assume you already tried that...

[ChrisH]

@adolescent

I have had the same SFS problem with IBrowse that Harry mentions

Did either you or Harry report this to the author of SFS?  If not, he can't look to see if this is a real bug with SFS, or some other issue.  (I suspect "some other issue" but guessing what is rather tricky.)

[ChrisH]

@Piru
I'll take that as a "no" then.  (It may have been there for you & maybe a few others for years, but if it isn't reported then it can't be known about or fixed by the author...)

BTW, yes it *could* be a bug in SFS, but the fact it isn't seen by many people suggests that it is in some wierd interaction between certain software (or hardware drivers) & SFS+IBrowse.  Both OS3 & IBrowse have many bugs, but these bugs don't usually cause problems - but perhaps SFS does something unusual that happens to be interfered by one of these bugs?  It would not be the first time that a bug in one app is blamed on another...  Maybe SFS has an unusual memory allocation pattern, and that badly interacts with a memory corruption bug in IBrowse?...  Who knows!

[ChrisH]

So much, it's even considered a feature of the filesystem.

Don't be ridiculous:  Journaling filing systems are designed to handle unexpected hardware/software shutdowns/crashes in general (not cause them).

But if SFS has a suggested procedure for recovering a corrupted partition, that is because it still has a "beta" tag (which IMHO has not been necessary for a long time, but I'm not the one dealing with other people's precious data).