From: HENRY::IN%"leichter-jerry%yale-eng-venus.arpa%kl.sri.com%csnet-relay.CSNET%relay.cs.net@RCA.COM" 18-JUN-1987 19:36 To: Howard Jares Subj: Re: VMS terminal port errors and Expir dates on dirs rather than volume ... The set volume expiration date feature works nice when you want to apply it to a entire volume.... Can I selectively turn on the expiration date (to be automatically modified when accessed) only on a complete directory tree? I realize that I could do this by doing the set volume/expire but this will be updating all my system file headers as the system is used. I would like to avoid this overhead. My gut feeling is that I get to wait for VMS V5... Expiration date maintenance is done at low levels of the I/O system, below the level where there's any real knowledge of directories. It's whole-volume or nothing. I would be rather surprised if this changed in V5, or ever. You can set the retention periods to minimize updates. If, for example, you set the retention period to (7-,8-), no file header will be updated more than once a day - an overhead you aren't likely to notice - but your error in com- puting what files have expired is at most one day. (With this retention period, no file will expire before 7 days have gone by, but some may survive for 8.) Alternatively, if you simply set the expiration dates for the system files far into the future, they'll never get updated at all. The SET FILE command can do this for you.... -- Jerry -------