On Tue, 25 Sep 2001 12:42:46 -0400, FAIRCHILD,CRAIG (HP-Cupertino,ex1)
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Hi Phil,
>
>PLEASE DON'T TRY ANY OF THE EARLIER SUGGESTIONS ON THIS THREAD! They will
>meet with the same end.
>
>You must purge files in reverse alphabetical order.

>Your system abort (probably a 2200) stems from the fact that the system is
>trying desperately to make sure that all the changes to your directory are
>permanently recorded. To do this, MPE uses its Transaction Management (XM)
>facility on all directory operations.

>So purging from the top of the directory causes us to log data equal to
>twice the size of the directory.

>The system abort comes from the fact that more data is being logged to XM
>than it can reliably record. When its logs fill completely and it can no
>longer provide protection for the transactions that have been initiated, XM
>will crash the system to ensure data integrity.

[hopefully I've condensed this properly] I'm curious if a :PAUSE between
file purges would help or hinder this, but I gather from the above that it
probably wouldn't help.  If I'm reading this right, when you have a
sufficient number of files in a directory, purging "the first one", even by
itself, could cause a system crash.  Purging a file "in the middle
somewhere" most likely won't, and purging the alphabetically-last file
should never cause this sort of abort (that's not to say a related crash
won't occur, however...)

If, OTOH, the problem stems from the sheer volume "over time", I wonder if
a 1-second (or more) pause between file purges (to allow the XM to post the
change logs) would alleviate this problem.  Admittedly, a 1-second pause
would drag this operation out to 40,000 seconds, (just over 11 hours),
which may or may not be suitable for a "24x7" shop...

I know MPE has recently included a wildcard-purge capability -- does this
do the "smart" thing of purging files in reverse order, or is it a time-
bomb waiting to go off?  (i.e., should this be an "enhancement" request to
both HP and VEsoft [and any other vendor that supplies a wildcard-purge
facility]?)

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