Re: cvs [annotate aborted]: invalid change text in <filename,v>

[Mike Ayers]

Larry Jones wrote:
> Todd Denniston writes:
>
> > Not that I WANT to work in the windows environment, but if CVS/RCS as a
> > repository is unstable in a local mode there, I would like to know if it is
> > something CVS is doing or could protect against (besides refusing to work there
> > :).
>
>
> If the data gets corrupted when CVS isn't updating it, it can't very
> well be something CVS is doing, now can it.  Nor could CVS do anything
> to protect against it, although it could, perhaps, detect it more
> aggressively.  No, such corruption is almost certainly caused by system
> software defects and/or hardware defects.  Most Windows machines have a
> notoriously unreliable operating system, main memory with no error
> detection, and a disk interface with no error detection.  In many ways,
> it's a tribute to modern technology that it doesn't break more often.

	It would be more accurate to say that it breaks far more often than 
we realize, but most of the breakage occurs in non-critical areas, 
since only a tiny portion of the typically installed code is actually 
critical.  I think that my problems this time came not from the OS, 
but from the even-less-reliable PC hardware.  I had a motherboard that 
seemed to work, but showed weird problems just often enough to not get 
discarded immediately.  I do not think I have had any corruptions 
since I replaced it.  BTW, it is my current suspicion that the failure 
occured immediately after CVS let go of the data - during the physical 
write to disk.  Does anyone know if CVS verify its writes?


/|/|ike