schuler@palantir.gsfc.nasa.gov (Larry Schuler - RMS) (10/12/89)
I posted a request a while back for information regarding tar and any problems
it had in working with symbolic link files. Well, I have done further
investigation to uncover the following problem with tar.
If you try to create a tar image that contains >25 symbolic link files, tar
will become confused, and eventually lose it's mind. Since I do not have
access to the source, I can't delve into this problem further, nor can I
even speculate what it may be; But, this is a warning to other users
and Apple.
This problem can be recreated easily. Just create 26 symbolic links to a file.
and attempt to creat a tar image of these files, save them so that the real
file (i.e. not symbolic link) is saved last. What will happen is tar will
save the first 25 links, then complain that it can't find the other files.
If you trim the number of symbolic links to 25, everything is ok. Hmmmmmmm.
Does anyone have any ideas what might be causing this ? Does tar maintain a
count of symbolic links for quota enforcement ?
Oh well, at least it's easy to get around.
--
-Larry "Fair is fair, Larry. ...
We're out of food, we drew straws -
schuler@palantir.gsfc.nasa.gov - you lost." - G. Larson