Re: Matching file to a physical medium

[mlelstv%serpens.de@localhost (Michael van Elst)]

cryintothebluesky%googlemail.com@localhost (Sad Clouds) writes:

>I'm struggling to find a good way to do it, because simply calling
>pthread_cancel() does not work. I'm not aware of any facility in Unix
>to abort a system call, maybe Unix signals can help, but I'd rather not
>mix signals and threads.

There is no way to abort an arbitrary system call, but if, then it is
done with a signal. On the other hand, aborting disk I/O is traditionally
impossible.

Aborting NFS I/O depends on how the fileserver is mounted:
a soft mount will just time out and doesn't need an abort, a hard
mount will not time out but if also interruptible it will abort on
a signal. I'm not sure wether NFS declares what signals may abort
the I/O operation, NetBSD checks for SIGINT, SIGTERM, SIGKILL, SIGHUP
and SIGQUIT.
I also remember there were issues with NFS mounts using TCP, the
abort then waited for a TCP timeout to complete.

-- 
-- 
                                Michael van Elst
Internet: mlelstv%serpens.de@localhost
                                "A potential Snark may lurk in every tree."