FSEdit and File System Maintenance in Symbolics Genera

Evidence and rights boundary

The installed Help database and the limited source subset came from the licensed Open Genera release and remain untracked. The decoded Help stays under the ignored build tree. This article publishes only portable artifact identities, short interface labels, factual inventories, and original analysis.

The inspected source subset does not contain the implementation of the FSEdit frame, its object menus, the File System Maintenance command levels, or the LMFS Salvager. Consequently, the user interface and maintenance behavior below are installed-Help and public-manual findings unless explicitly marked as a limited source finding. A future complete licensed-source recovery is required for the same code-level completeness achieved for the MIT tools.

Names and boundaries

The frame starts with a command menu above a Lisp Interaction pane. A Tree Edit command changes the large pane into FSEdit. Lisp Window changes it back, where Command Processor commands or Lisp forms can be entered. The menu has four nested levels; moving deeper increases both authority and potential damage.

Entry points and a version discrepancy

The installed Genera 8 documentation gives three entry routes:

• Select F;
• the Command Processor command Select Activity File System Operations; and
• File System in the System menu.

Those are intended documented routes, not all confirmed behavior of the repository's live 8.5 world. A fresh runtime inventory documented in Activities, Select keys, and the System Menu found no Select F binding and no File System Maintenance entry in the live activity table. That world may differ by release, loaded systems, or site state. The discrepancy is preserved rather than “corrected” from one source.

The workbook assigns three gestures to Tree Edit Home Dir:

The Site Operations Help record only says that Tree Edit Home Dir uses the home directory. Because the exact three-way behavior has not yet been exercised in the 8.5 runtime, it remains a version-sensitive manual finding.

FSEdit's tree model

The selected base directory opens automatically. Each inferior appears as an indented row:

• a closed directory initially has a pathname row with no inferiors;
• opening it inserts rows for its contents;
• a file row has name, type, version, lengths, dates, and available ownership/flag fields; and
• a link row substitutes an arrow and target pathname for ordinary length detail.

Opening successive directories produces a recursive tree, not a new window for each directory. Closing a directory hides its inferiors. The ordinary mouse scrolling behavior handles trees larger than the pane.

FSEdit caches an opened directory. If another user changes it, the display can be stale until Decache tells FSEdit to discard the cached model and reread the directory. This is an important operational distinction: Refresh Display repaints the current view, whereas Decache refreshes its file-system data.

Direct FSEdit gestures

With TV:USE-NEW-FSEDIT-COMMAND-SET at its default true value:

Setting that variable false restores the pre-Genera 8.0 mapping: Left opens and Middle closes. It removes the direct Middle delete/undelete gesture; deletion remains available from the menu.

TV:CONFIRM-FSEDIT-QUICK-SOFT-FILE-DELETION defaults true. Setting it false removes confirmation only when the target host supports soft deletion and therefore undeletion. FSEdit always confirms deletion on a host where deletion is immediate. This prevents a preference intended for reversible LMFS deletion from weakening the hard-delete boundary on another file system.

The installed FSEdit Help defines no dedicated keyboard command table. It refers to ordinary scrolling and to keyboard continuation after typeout, while the encompassing Lisp Interaction pane accepts commands. Without the missing implementation source or a runtime audit, this page does not infer additional FSEdit keys.

Complete FSEdit object-command inventory

Right-click presents only commands applicable to the selected object's type and the host's capabilities. These are all 20 commands documented by the inspected installed Help:

The Link Transparencies choice exposes five documented operation keywords:

Defaults can be set on a directory for newly created links. This makes a link's behavior operation-specific rather than a single follow/do-not-follow switch. Directory links are a special case: the documentation permits chains up to ten links and says the transparency list is not interpreted while resolving such a directory chain.

Delete and Expunge must also be kept separate. Soft-deleted LMFS objects can be undeleted. Expunge makes the corresponding storage reclaimable and is not undone by FSEdit's Undelete command.

All four File System Maintenance menus

Free records and crash behavior

LMFS keeps a small working pool of free records in memory; the installed documentation describes roughly 30 records in normal use. Those records are marked as in use in the on-disk free map while held in the pool. A crash before the pool is flushed can therefore strand space, but it should not make the same record available to two files. Flush Free Buffer makes that state durable, and logout normally invokes the same protection. The Salvager reconstructs the map and can recover stranded records.

Free Records reports three different views because they answer different questions:

• Left/default compares the maps' free and used totals and can expose lost records;
• Middle attributes record use by directory into a requested output file; and
• Right reports use by physical LMFS partition, which is the necessary capacity evidence before growing or removing one.

LMFS partition files and FSPT

An LMFS installation can use a default FEP file on the boot drive and additional FEP files as partitions. An optional FEP:>fspt.fspt table records which FEP files comprise the local LMFS. If that table is absent, the boot-drive lmfs.file is the default.

The LMFS partition contents do not themselves record their current FEP pathname. That permits moving a partition file if FSPT is updated to the new location, but it also means preservation provenance must retain both the partition bytes and the external table that assembles them. The table file is metadata for the set, not an interchangeable data partition.

The Salvager

Limited source findings

The distributed source subset establishes two architectural points but does not implement the visible programs:

1. The storage-description layer constructs explicit flat byte and bit fields over ART-8B storage, including bit arrays and character strings. It is an on-disk representation substrate rather than a graph of ordinary in-memory Lisp pointers.
2. The user-facing file-system access layer distinguishes a local LMFS access path from network paths. If local LMFS support is not loaded, it signals that condition instead of trying to connect back to the same machine through the network protocol.

The second behavior is a fail-closed local/remote boundary. It does not establish how FSEdit commands are dispatched, how Salvager updates are ordered, or whether Active Structure Edit has safeguards.

Manual disagreements and source gaps

The evidence does not form one seamless specification:

• installed manuals prescribe Select F, but the inspected live 8.5 activity table has no F binding;
• the workbook gives three mouse gestures for Tree Edit Home Dir, while Site Operations states only the generic home-directory result;
• the public and installed manuals describe the visible and operator surfaces, but the distributed licensed source subset omits their implementation; and
• installed Help states the intended no-file-loss property of repatriation, but the same description permits replacing bad records with fresh empty ones.

These are explicit TODOs for implementation recovery and runtime observation, not invitations to select whichever version is more convenient.

Runtime and screenshot status

No FSEdit or File System Maintenance screenshot is published with this page. The root operator did not clear a Genera harness slot for this subtask, and the current private world is not documented as a configured Symbolics site with a disposable local LMFS. Entering Levels 2–4 without that isolation would create an unnecessary risk of changing licensed world or FEP storage. The live activity-table discrepancy also means Select F cannot be treated as a verified route in this world.

TODO: copy the licensed world and all FEP/LMFS inputs into a named isolated Genera harness session; create a disposable test hierarchy; reach the frame through a route actually present in that world; capture the initial Lisp pane, one FSEdit tree, an object-sensitive Right menu, and the four menu levels without invoking maintenance actions. Verify Left/Middle/Right behavior only on disposable objects. Record all harness hashes and shutdown flags, then select only the minimum scholarly images for image-specific review under the screenshot publication policy.

Destructive runtime tests of Initialize, Remove Partition, salvage repair, or Active Structure Edit require a separately hash-identified throwaway LMFS image and an explicit experiment plan. They are not prerequisites for safely capturing the menus.

Preservation implications

• Preserve the FEP partition files and FSPT together; neither alone completely identifies a multipartition LMFS.
• Hash an immutable pre-salvage copy. A successful boot or directory listing after salvage does not prove that every original record survived.
• Write Salvager output outside the local LMFS under repair.
• Use Free Records' partition report before any grow/remove decision.
• Treat Close All Files and Server Shutdown as machine-wide operations, not only file-system-local cleanup.
• Distinguish soft deletion, expunging, orphan repatriation, free-map rebuilding, record checking, and partition evacuation in research logs.
• Never infer an implementation guarantee from Active Structure Edit's presence; the available source does not expose its mutation model.

Sources

• Symbolics, Site Operations, Genera 8.
• Symbolics, Genera User's Guide, Genera 8.
• Symbolics, Genera Workbook, FSEdit exercise.
• Symbolics, Genera 8.0 Release Notes, FSEdit mouse-command transition.
• Symbolics, Genera 8.1 Release Notes, safer orphan-repatriation default.
• The licensed installed-Help and source artifacts identified above, inspected locally without reproducing their payloads.

Last verified: 2026-07-18.