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From: davidsen@steinmetz.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.bugs.sys5
Subject: Re: Unlinking "."
Message-ID: <1395@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 6-Apr-87 10:52:10 EST
Article-I.D.: steinmet.1395
Posted: Mon Apr  6 10:52:10 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 11-Apr-87 04:46:54 EST
References: <1059@cci632.UUCP> <709@brl-sem.ARPA>
Reply-To: davidsen@kbsvax.steinmetz.UUCP (William E. Davidsen Jr)
Organization: General Electric CRD, Schenectady, NY
Lines: 20
Keywords: unlink

In article <709@brl-sem.ARPA> ron@brl-sem.ARPA (Ron Natalie <ron>) writes:
>...
>rm/rmdir will not let you remove dot.  It is not a good idea to that
>and they avoid this pitfall.  But if you are root, and you bypass their
>protection by using the link/unlink system calls you can unlink the "."
>entries and link directories as well.  This can make an unholy mess
>out of your filesystem.

Once upon a time I wrote a routine to do sort of a "symbolic link",
putting one directory in another such that directory C seemed to be a
subdirectory of both A nd B. Obviously the value of .. was not
consistant, but I avoided rewriting a large BSD application. Someone
later used this to link a directory in itself (I assume by stupidity
rather than malace). Then they tried to run a dump... You're right, it
DOES make a mess.
-- 
bill davidsen			sixhub \
      ihnp4!seismo!rochester!steinmetz ->  crdos1!davidsen
				chinet /
ARPA: davidsen%crdos1.uucp@ge-crd.ARPA (or davidsen@ge-crd.ARPA)