[comp.unix.questions] Unix System V link

bronsard@m.cs.uiuc.edu (Francois Bronsard) (01/17/90)

I have a question about the dangers of having two hard links to the
same directory in Unix System V.  Basically, I cannot do a symbolic
link (because my version of the system is too old), so I was told that
I could use the system call link() to create a hard link to a directory.
However, I was warned that such a thing is dangerous since it might
confuse the file system (specifically, the programs find and
fsck/icheck/ncheck).  Now my question is : "How dangerous is it really?"
In particular, all I want to do create the following structure :
                    $home
                    / .. \ ...
                   /      \
                FILES      \   
                  \         \
                   \_______files
                            ...

 (The link between FILES and files is the new link that I want to have).
So what problems can such a link cause to the files systems?

Francois

gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn) (01/17/90)

In article <1990Jan16.204355.13792@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> bronsard@m.cs.uiuc.edu.UUCP (Francois Bronsard) writes:
>Now my question is : "How dangerous is it really?"

It's very dangerous, because when you rmdir one of the links
the other will no longer find . and .. entries in the directory.

Don't do it.