Subject: Re: Anecdote time
To: Peter Seebach <seebs@plethora.net>
From: Greywolf <greywolf@starwolf.com>
List: netbsd-advocacy
Date: 04/30/2001 11:55:03
User: Greywolf	(BSDwolf on IRC since "Greywolf" is pretty heavily used)
Preferred OS:  NetBSD
Reasons:
	* Stability
	* Portability (nothing else runs reliably on a SPARCstation,
	  which is what I started with).
	* The user community is, by and large, both knowledgable AND
	  friendly.
Anecdote:

	Recently had the ... um ... "privilege" of running AOSOS
	automounter.  It decided to wedge, so I killed it and started
	unmounting things manually.  I decided to rmdir all the empty
	directories, and when it hit a particular user's home directory,
	it refused to rmdir.  The error it returned?  "No such file or
	directory."
	# cd aforementioned_dir
	# cd ..
	# rmdir aforementioned_dir
	aforementioned_dir: No such file or directory.
	# rm -fr aforementioned_dir
	[pause.  Hit ^C in a panic after realising what's happening.]

	Now, pardon me, but if you do a rmdir, shouldn't you get ENOTEMPTY
	or (in case it's a mount point) EBUSY (assuming it's empty), and
	not ENOENT?  Principle of least surprise?  Anyone?

	I still haven't fully recovered my home directory, and AOSOS
	amd does random hangs when I update the amd.home maps.  Feh.


				--*greywolf;
--
*BSD: Stable and strong!