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From: les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell)
Newsgroups: comp.bugs.sys5,comp.unix.wizards,comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: ln(1) and System V
Message-ID: <6878@chinet.chi.il.us>
Date: 1 Nov 88 18:53:06 GMT
References: <1988Oct31.141701.11055@utfyzx.uucp>
Reply-To: les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell)
Distribution: na
Organization: Chinet - Public Access Unix
Lines: 18

In article <1988Oct31.141701.11055@utfyzx.uucp> harrison@utfyzx.UUCP (David Harrison) writes:
>Recently Geoff Collyer (utstat!geoff) has pointed out that under System 
>V the command:
>	ln old new
>will destroy "new" if it already exists.  Historically and under other 

Many sysV's have /etc/link which just passes its arguments to the system
call.  In some versions it is executable only by root, but that is easy
to fix.  Personally, I think that ln should have had a -f flag to delete
an existing file with the same names as the destination (but I also think
that sysV is severely crippled by not having an atomic rename).

>There certainly are lock problems under SV:  the print spooler will
>croak if it is fed a large number of jobs nearly simultaneously; a

Can someone explain this one?  Does it involve the FIFO or creating
the spooled work file?  Does uucp have the same problem?

  Les Mikesell