Summary of responses to file allocation, plea for changes in Unix

[Ted Lemon]

Doug,

It seems like what you really want is to add a new filesystem to the
Unix kernel which supports the features you need.   The Berkeley
kernel has been nicely partitioned so that that sort of thing is
possible, if not trivial, so if you wanted to, you (or some
enterprising third party) could probably implement such a filesystem
and sell it to people with Berkeley kernels.

Another option would be to set up a custom NFS server that had its own
filesystem code with the capability of preallocating files.  I'm not
sure that would give you the performance you need, but it's a
possibility.

I suspect, though, that any solution you attempt which requires that
all the major manufacturers of Unix products to band together and
agree to solve this problem will come to naught - we can't even all
agree that Berkeley Unix is the only true Unix, even though that's as
plain as the nose on my face, so how are we going to agree to add a
feature like that?   ;'}

You can submit a product requirement to DEC stating that you need this
feature in order to use our product, and it's possible that they might
pay attention to your request, but I make no guarantees, particularly
since I'm not even associated with the group that makes Ultrix...

			       _MelloN_

(The above is, of course, personal opinion, and not a Digital
Equipment Corporation policy statement.)