phil@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Phil Howard KA9WGN) (03/24/91)
Does anyone see any technical problems with having a single inode for a symlink, linked to under several different names? The symlink does NOT point to a directory, it points to a file. All of the links to the one symlink are in the same subdirectory, for convenience. The purpose is to have ONE command (rsh) executed under a number of different names (various host names). The rsh command is on a different filesystem than the subdirectory, so a symlink is required. The alternative was to have separate symlinks under each name, but that appeared to be consuming a data block for each one to store the name the symlink was pointing to. I wanted to conserve some space. Unlink directories, the hardlinked symlinks are easily removable. One of the anticipated problems is that backup/restore and/or archive/extract of them will fail. I probably can live with that as long as it does not cause something to crash, rather just fail to restore the links. Comments? -- /***************************************************************************\ < Phil Howard -- KA9WGN -- phil@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu > \***************************************************************************/
brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) (03/26/91)
In article <1991Mar24.000253.9515@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> phil@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Phil Howard KA9WGN) writes: > Does anyone see any technical problems with having a single inode for > a symlink, linked to under several different names? Sure: it changes the semantics of ln -s foo bar; ln bar blah; rm bar. > The alternative was to have separate symlinks under each name, but that > appeared to be consuming a data block for each one to store the name > the symlink was pointing to. I wanted to conserve some space. Then you should be asking for symlinks stored in the directory file rather than in separate fragments. ---Dan
rbj@uunet.UU.NET (Root Boy Jim) (03/28/91)
In article <1991Mar24.000253.9515@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> phil@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Phil Howard KA9WGN) writes: >Does anyone see any technical problems with having a single inode for >a symlink, linked to under several different names? Symlinks aren't implemented that way. >The purpose is to have ONE command (rsh) executed under a number of >different names (various host names). The rsh command is on a different >filesystem than the subdirectory, so a symlink is required. True. >The alternative was to have separate symlinks under each name, but that >appeared to be consuming a data block for each one to store the name >the symlink was pointing to. I wanted to conserve some space. The space used is negligible. However, could always put rsh in /usr/hosts with as many links as you like, and put the symlink into /usr/ucb. rm -f /usr/hosts/* cd /usr/ucb mv rsh /usr/hosts ln -s /usr/hosts/rsh . cd /usr/hosts ln rsh foo ln rsh bar ... -- [rbj@uunet 1] stty sane unknown mode: sane