[sf-lug] directory tree organization question

[Jason Turner]

Good attitude, IMHO.

You're doing a lot of meta-tagging in your dir structure. How long before one of the linux filesystems has a feature that does this for you -- similar to the Smart Folders concept in many email clients(using virtual folders again)? While one could write one's own script to create smart tags like this, it seems a lot less headache(and not much to ask these days) to have all this managed by the filesytem.

(This is where someone keeping up with proposed changes in filesystem dev circles chimes in). 

Jim, thanks for sharing your system. You've made me think about my own. Which, to be honest, has most often involved me giving up on smart archival methods and just deleting gigs wily nily(usually to lessen the pain of backups). Then crying about it sometime later. And then a little later, forgetting what I cried about...

--
Jt



jim <jim at well.com> wrote:

hiya, jason! it was the symlink business that i thought did not address the naming issue. as to directory structure, i've decided the following: current/ # stuff i'm currently working on this/ # stuff i'm likely to work on but is not in current/ this/bak/ # copies of stuff that's important this/old/ # stuff i probably won't look at this/saf/ # copies of stuff that i'm currently working with this/yearbeforelast/ # stuff that's older than old /old/this/yearbeforeyearbeforelast/ # probably obvious /bak/this/ # identical to this/bak/ plus older stuff i want you raise an interesting point: the current technology is so different in degree from the technologies of the 1970s and 1980s that there are strategic differentiations that have resulted from the changes in degree. storage capacity to some degree has become a non-issue. got lots of new, modern media files? get yourself some multi-terrabyte drives, no problem. but the namespace issue persists: do i set up lots of shallow directories
or few deep directories? my brain didn't get bigger in the last few decades: i still have an upper limit of areas i can manage as well as an upper limit as to the detail of any one area. i may have learned something useful: don't take anything very seriously: tolerate exceptions, just remember i'm gonna have to manage them. On Sun, 2011-03-13 at 15:53 -0500, Jason Turner wrote: > It's [meta] information mgmt questions like this that reveal just how > confused I've become. Once upon a time, I might have had a strong opinion > about this but have been bitten every which route I traveled so... > > My first thought was similar to Bill's, I think. Do both! If you can > "afford it"(extra disk space, filesystem limits on inodes, certain disk > operations being a little(or a lot) more expensive). Specifically, I > think I'd put "OLD" in subdirs in the physical disk and create a top level > /OLD "virtual" directory with symlinks. That just appeals to some > possibly irrational sense of
organization to me. Perhaps you'd prefer to > go the other way? > > But you've already said that this approach "doesn't resolve the naming > strategic question". And I'm not sure I follow you. If you did decide > that you wanted a copy of OLD on removable media, then no problem in my > "expensive" setup, right? I just presume disks are getting bigger if you > wonder why I'm nonchalant about incurring that expense. > > I think I'll stop digging my hole. I'm thinking about updating from my > getting-a-little-long-in-tooth G4 laptop so whatever you decide, let us > know! > > -- > jt > > > > > symlinks solves the problem of leanness in the > > working directories, but doesn't resolve the naming > > strategic question. > > And what if I want the OLD stuff on some external, > > removeable media? I might be able to put up with the > > occasional inconvenience of waiting to access old > > stuff until I get home or hook up the external storage.... > > thanks! > > > > > > > > On Thu,
2011-03-10 at 10:13 -0800, Bill Kendrick wrote: > >> On Mon, Mar 07, 2011 at 09:19:32PM -0800, jim wrote: > >> > > >> > crikey, ken! that's a good thought, too! > >> > > >> > maybe i should do both? have a top-level > >> > OLD/ tree for some stuff and for other > >> > stuff have OLD subdirectories, kind of > >> > like the various bin/ and lib/ and other > >> > directories scattered around the system. > >> > >> What about symlinks? > >> > >> Have OLD/x/y/z > >> > >> and then use symbolic links in your new tree...? > >> > >> x/y/z/OLD -> ~/OLD/x/y/z > >> > >> *shrug* > >> > >> -bill! > >> > >>_____________________________________________
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