Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!know!sdd.hp.com!usc!ucsd!ucbvax!van-bc!ubc-cs!alberta!aunro!aupair.cs.athabascau.ca!lyndon From: lyndon@cs.athabascau.ca (Lyndon Nerenberg) Newsgroups: comp.unix.internals Subject: Re: How do you find the symbolic links to files. Message-ID: <461@aupair.cs.athabascau.ca> Date: 28 Nov 90 22:24:38 GMT References: <1990Nov26.082214.17329@oracle.com> <1990Nov26.150716.7268@specialix.co.uk> <1990Nov26.193324.5396@decuac.dec.com> <1990Nov27.155015.24837@specialix.co.uk> Organization: Athabasca University Lines: 27 jonb@specialix.co.uk (Jon Brawn) writes: >I would hope that tar would copy the contents of the file. That would be >do much more useful than trying to do a restore, and discovering that what >you thought you had backed up as /usr/data_base/main_data_file was in >actual fact just a sixty four character pathname to an obscure corner of the >file system, and that you had, in fact, lost everything in the last crash... >...but I guess tar will probably just backup the symbolic path name anyway. I don't think you can blame tar for sloppy administration practices. If you don't back up all your file systems, you will have this type of problem regardless of what software you use for your archives. What about the case where you have the following symlinks: /nfs/user0/lyndon/bin/share/mailq --> /usr/local/smail/mailq /usr/local/smail/mailq --> /usr/local/bin/smail /usr/local/bin/smail --> /usr/lib/sendmail where /nfs/user0, /usr, and /usr/local are seperate filesystems. How should tar deal with this? -- Lyndon Nerenberg VE6BBM / Computing Services / Athabasca University {alberta,cbmvax,mips}!atha!lyndon || lyndon@cs.athabascau.ca Packet: ve6bbm@ve6mc [.ab.can.na] The only thing open about OSF is their mouth. --Chuck Musciano