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From: naim@nucsrl.UUCP (Naim Abdullah)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Symbolic Links in Sys 5.3.1
Message-ID: <3680028@nucsrl.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 22-Oct-87 20:38:44 EST
Article-I.D.: nucsrl.3680028
Posted: Thu Oct 22 20:38:44 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 25-Oct-87 17:26:22 EST
References: <3680027@nucsrl.UUCP>
Organization: Northwestern U, Evanston IL, USA
Lines: 44



In article <3680027@nucsrl.UUCP> I wrote:

>How does one create symbolic links in System V, rel. 3.1 ?
>Also, what are the equivalents of the 4.3bsd lstat(2) and
>S_IFLNK (in the st_mode word of the structure returned by stat(2)) ?

In response, Eduardo Krell wrote:

>This is joke, right?

>There are no symbolic links in System V Release 2 or 3 or 3.1 or anything
>else. Period. You can only create hard links within a file system, and
>only root can link to a directory.

>I hope symbolic links do make it into System V soon. We have a modified
>5.3.1 kernel with symbolic links, but it's an internal version.

The reason I asked this question was that I noticed code for
symbolic links in the sources for our System V, rel. 3.1 kernel.
We got the sources directly from AT&T and no, we did not hack
them. Check out line 310 of src/uts/3b2/os/nami.c where there
is the comment:

#ifdef IFLNK
		/* If the file is a symbolic link, the */
		mumble, mumble...
#endif

I have deleted two lines of comments and two lines of code in the ifdef
because I don't want to be sued by AT&T for revealing any of their
proprietary secrets, but suffice it to say that the vanilla
Sys5.3.1 kernel appears to have some support for plugging
in a filesystem containing symbolic links. Anybody, know
how to do that, or whether the kernel needs some more work
to support symbolic links ?

		      Naim Abdullah
		      Dept. of EECS,
		      Northwestern University

		      Internet: naim@eecs.nwu.edu
		      Uucp: {ihnp4, chinet, gargoyle}!nucsrl!naim