Black hole shares

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

On Thu, 26 Mar 1998, Dan Shearer wrote:

> Microsoft Office (and other Windows packages) wants to write to
> ridiculous files that it has no reason to, system DLLs, its own .EXEs and 
> the like. This is what makes it so very hard to run Office from a network 
> server, NT or any other. There are ways, but they are all very nasty.

dan, we run microtoss office's word 97 at the cafe.  i copied the
necessary files until it worked.  i _haven't_ registered the dlls, but the
entire share is definitely read-only.

we just put up with the "do you want to save normal.dot"?  no
[substitute-swear-word-of-your-choice] way, when you exit.
 
> What about a new share property that let any number of users open any 
> number of files for writing in any byte range (or even any number of 
> exclusive file locks) but nothing was ever actually written? Have to do 
> some audits first on what really is happening but its just an idea I was 
> throwing around with Richard Sharpe.

this would be interesting to investigate.  a "fake write" option :-)