beattie@visenix.UUCP (Brian Beattie) (11/09/89)
I think it is a good idea to allow root to link directories. One reason is to allow root to repair broken directories. If a directory is missing "." or ".." this can be repaired only with link(2). Not the strongest of arguments I know. -- Do Not meddle in the | Brian Beattie (703)471-7552 affairs of Wizards, | 11525 Hickory Cluster, Reston, VA. 22090 for you are crunchy | beattie@visenix.UU.NET and go well with catsup| ...uunet!visenix!beattie
peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) (11/10/89)
In article <1989Nov8.181933.2121@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes: > In article <6849@ficc.uu.net> peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes: > >Unless you allow soft links, links to directories are pretty much > >a necessity. > Can you explain why? Utzoo lived without either for most of a decade. It depends on your environemnt. In an academic environment, it's probably OK... you have the sources to just about everything. When you don't have the sources, though, and you have brain-dead software floating around with hard-coded paths... it's nice to be able to: /etc/link /usr/ucb/bin /usr/local/bin Sure, you can patch the executables. Again and again and again. And you can use 'lntree' (or a clever find hack). But it's a lot easier to do it once and for all. You don't need this sort of thing often... I've done it maybe 3 times in the past 10 years... but when you need it, it's pretty important. Yes, I know MINIX isn't currently a production environemnt on whhich you expect to be running commercial software. But, one day... -- `-_-' Peter da Silva <peter@ficc.uu.net> <peter@sugar.hackercorp.com>. 'U` -------------- +1 713 274 5180. "*Real* wizards don't whine about how they paid their dues" -- Quentin Johnson quent@atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu