Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!dptg!ulysses!andante!mit-eddie!bbn.com!usc!ucsd!ucbvax!mindcrf.UUCP!karish
From: karish@mindcrf.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Hard links to directories: why not?
Summary: They corrupt the tree, ftw or no ftw
Keywords: ln, directories, security...
Message-ID: <9007221600.AA00202@mindcrf.mindcraft.com>
Date: 22 Jul 90 16:00:20 GMT
References: <5222@milton.u.washington.edu> <6940@eos.UUCP> <1990Jul19.115622.14015@mips2.cr.bull.com> <11070@alice.UUCP>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: Mindcraft, Inc.
Lines: 21

In article <11070@alice.UUCP> andrew@alice.UUCP (Andrew Hume) writes:

>as everyone has said, you don't want hard links to dirs
>because the tree'ness of the file system gets buggered.
>on the other hand, links to files already do that to some extent.

    Links to files don't `bugger' the file system's structure,
    because they don't create loops that make tree traversal
    ambiguous.  It's still a tree, with some leaves fused
    together.

>and symbolic links do it completely as you can symlink to directories.
>allowing hard links to dirs makes the problem no worse, really.

    fsck can ignore symbolic links or treat them as ordinary files.
    It can't ignore hard links.  Hard links confuse the system;
    symbolic links needn't.
-- 

	Chuck Karish		karish@mindcraft.com
	Mindcraft, Inc.		(415) 323-9000