Re: Socket, whiteout, FIFO, what's the meaning?

From: Barry Margolin (barry.margolin_at_level3.com)
Date: 07/28/03 

Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 17:16:21 GMT

In article <p.thibault-47AE1D.12050028072003@nr-ott01.bellnexxia.net>,
Pierre Thibault <p.thibault@bigfoot.com> wrote:
>In article <bg3eas$jn9$1@reader1.panix.com>,
> Jeremiah DeWitt Weiner <jdw@panix.com> wrote:
>
>> For definitions of computing terms, take a look at FOLDOC, the
>> Free On-Line Dictionary Of Computing, at http://wombat.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/.
>> Socket and FIFO are there, but "whiteout" isn't, and I've never heard that
>> term used in a Unix sense. Can you provide context for it?
>
>Thank you. I'll take a look at the reference. This is something that
>will help me.
>
>The term 'whiteout' is used in the documentation of FreeBSD for the 'ls'
>command. Here is the link of this command:
>
>http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=ls&apropos=0&sektion=0&manpath=F
>reeBSD+4.8-RELEASE&format=html
>
>Look at the '-F' option.
>
>May be this kind of thing is only used in BSD.

Apparently it's a BSD-only feature. I did some googling and found that
it's a directory entry that hides the original file with that name, but
doesn't actually remove it. See
<http://www.monkey.org/openbsd/archive/tech/0006/msg00010.html> 

-- 
Barry Margolin, barry.margolin@level3.com
Level(3), Woburn, MA
*** DON'T SEND TECHNICAL QUESTIONS DIRECTLY TO ME, post them to newsgroups.
Please DON'T copy followups to me -- I'll assume it wasn't posted to the group.

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