Data loss

[Peter Harvey <pah06 uow edu au>]

Hello,

I've submitted a bugzilla bug about this. It's an instance of data loss
which occurs when moving a directory. I originally reported it under
Nautilus, and then moved it to GnomeVFS. Haven't heard anything about
it, and since it *is* data loss I thought I might shout a little louder.
:)

The bug report http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=145487 goes
something like this.....

---------------------------------------------

Copying a file with a ? in the name to a FAT partition will fail under
Nautilus. This is not a bug, as FAT partitions don't support ? in
filenames. But for me /share is a a FAT partition, and this is where I
noticed a bug. The following shell session demonstrates what I see: 
harvey samwise:~$ nautilus --version
Gnome nautilus 2.6.3
harvey samwise:~$ mkdir test
harvey samwise:~$ echo hello > 'test/test?me'
harvey samwise:~$ echo hello > 'test/test.me'
harvey samwise:~$ ls -l test
total 8
-rw-r--r--    1 harvey   harvey          6 2004-07-06 21:10 test?me
-rw-r--r--    1 harvey   harvey          6 2004-07-06 21:10 test.me
At this point, I use Nautilus to move (drag using middle mouse button,
and select 'Move') the directory 'test' to '/share'. I get one error
talking about "Invalid Parameters" for the test directory. After
pressing 'Skip' the directory is supposedly moved. I now do the
following at a prompt:

harvey samwise:~$ ls -l /share/test
total 4
-rwxrwxrwx    1 root     root            6 2004-07-06 21:10 test.me
harvey samwise:~$ ls -l test
ls: test: No such file or directory
And we have data loss! The file 'test?me' has been deleted. Note that
this bug is sensitive to the order in which the files are created. If I
create the file with the ? in it's name second, there is no data loss.

---------------------------------------------

While it's an obscure and rare bug, I think it should be ringing alarm
bells that there's a logic problem somewhere within either Nautilus or
the file module of GnomeVFS. I've tried to track it down myself using
ViewCVS on gnome.org but haven't been successful. I thought it was
related to the use of the rmdir function, but rmdir refuses to remove a
directory if the directory contains a file, so it can't be that.

Anyway, just thought I'd let you know.

-- 
Peter Harvey.
Mostly Quiet.