From: "Richard B. Johnson" <root@chaos.analogic.com>
To: Stephan von Krawczynski <skraw@ithnet.com>
Cc: Helge Hafting <helgehaf@aitel.hist.no>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: FS: hardlinks on directories
Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2003 09:36:37 -0400 (EDT) [thread overview]
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.53.0308050916140.5994@chaos> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20030805150351.5b81adfe.skraw@ithnet.com>
On Tue, 5 Aug 2003, Stephan von Krawczynski wrote:
> On Tue, 05 Aug 2003 14:51:46 +0200
> Helge Hafting <helgehaf@aitel.hist.no> wrote:
>
> > Even more fun is when you have a directory loop like this:
> >
> > mkdir A
> > cd A
> > mkdir B
> > cd B
> > make hard link C back to A
> >
> > cd ../..
> > rmdir A
> >
> > You now removed A from your home directory, but the
> > directory itself did not disappear because it had
> > another hard link from C in B.
>
> How about a truly simple idea:
>
> rmdir A says "directory in use" and is rejected
>
> Which means you simply cannot remove the first directory entry before not all
> other links to it are removed. This implies only two things:
> 1) you have to know who was first.
> 2) you have to be able to find out where the links are.
>
> Both sound solvable.
>
> Regards,
> Stephan
>
A hard-link is, by definition, indistinguishable from the original
entry. In fact, with fast machines and the course granularity of
file-system times, even the creation time may be exactly the
same.
Without making one of the files different, and therefore not
a hard-link, there is no way for an operating system to distinguish
them except by keeping some list of hard-link inodes in some container
file or some other such atrocious misconduct. Then every significant
file operation would require a search of this inode-list to determine
the special handling of such hard-linked directories.
A directory hard-link to the same directory will cause any
recursive directory look-up to fail. It doesn't fail with
sim-links because they are specifically different and can be
excluded from the infinite recursion syndrome that would
exist otherwise.
Somebody mentioned that VAX/VMS would allow hard-linked
directories. This is not true. Even files, created with
SET FILE ENTER=DUA0:[1.DIR] DUA0:[000000] that seemed
like hard links were not hard links. They were sim-links.
The file entry contained the directory information of the
file being linked, and was not a clone of the header
(inode) itself as would be a hard link. Therefore, these
were unique and could not cause recursion to fail.
Cheers,
Dick Johnson
Penguin : Linux version 2.4.20 on an i686 machine (797.90 BogoMips).
Note 96.31% of all statistics are fiction.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2003-08-05 13:34 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 79+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2003-08-04 12:15 FS: hardlinks on directories Stephan von Krawczynski
2003-08-04 12:45 ` Måns Rullgård
2003-08-04 13:22 ` Stephan von Krawczynski
2003-08-04 13:37 ` Christian Reichert
2003-08-04 13:44 ` Stephan von Krawczynski
2003-08-04 14:22 ` Christian Reichert
2003-08-04 15:31 ` Jeff Muizelaar
2003-08-04 16:15 ` Stephan von Krawczynski
2003-08-05 2:45 ` Neil Brown
2003-08-05 9:41 ` Stephan von Krawczynski
2003-08-06 1:12 ` Neil Brown
2003-08-06 10:14 ` Stephan von Krawczynski
2003-08-07 2:27 ` Neil Brown
2003-08-04 12:47 ` Nikita Danilov
2003-08-04 13:32 ` Stephan von Krawczynski
2003-08-04 13:44 ` Andries Brouwer
2003-08-04 13:56 ` Stephan von Krawczynski
2003-08-04 14:04 ` Anton Altaparmakov
2003-08-04 14:50 ` Stephan von Krawczynski
2003-08-04 20:03 ` Olivier Galibert
2003-08-04 21:16 ` Jesse Pollard
2003-08-04 23:34 ` Stephan von Krawczynski
2003-08-05 14:20 ` Jesse Pollard
2003-08-05 14:44 ` Stephan von Krawczynski
2003-08-04 22:58 ` Andrew Pimlott
2003-08-05 0:19 ` Stephan von Krawczynski
2003-08-05 1:18 ` Andrew Pimlott
2003-08-05 8:04 ` Stephan von Krawczynski
2003-08-05 11:18 ` Wakko Warner
2003-08-04 14:33 ` Jesse Pollard
2003-08-04 15:05 ` Stephan von Krawczynski
2003-08-04 15:57 ` Richard B. Johnson
2003-08-04 21:23 ` Jesse Pollard
2003-08-04 16:11 ` Adam Sampson
2003-08-04 17:00 ` Hans Reiser
2003-08-04 17:18 ` Sean Neakums
2003-08-05 4:53 ` jw schultz
2003-08-04 18:50 ` jlnance
2003-08-04 21:09 ` Jesse Pollard
2003-08-04 22:13 ` Stephan von Krawczynski
2003-08-04 22:32 ` Stephan von Krawczynski
2003-08-04 23:00 ` Randolph Bentson
2003-08-05 0:10 ` Stephan von Krawczynski
2003-08-05 2:09 ` Edgar Toernig
2003-08-05 8:05 ` Stephan von Krawczynski
2003-08-05 12:51 ` Helge Hafting
2003-08-05 13:03 ` Stephan von Krawczynski
2003-08-05 13:13 ` Bernd Petrovitsch
2003-08-05 13:39 ` Stephan von Krawczynski
2003-08-05 13:36 ` Richard B. Johnson [this message]
2003-08-05 14:04 ` Stephan von Krawczynski
2003-08-05 14:57 ` Richard B. Johnson
2003-08-05 15:08 ` Stephan von Krawczynski
2003-08-05 15:02 ` Jesse Pollard
2003-08-05 15:12 ` Stephan von Krawczynski
2003-08-05 15:44 ` Trond Myklebust
2003-08-05 14:56 ` Jesse Pollard
2003-08-05 22:08 ` Helge Hafting
2003-08-24 17:35 ` Hans Reiser
2003-08-24 19:02 ` Helge Hafting
2003-08-25 8:27 ` Nikita Danilov
2003-08-25 15:48 ` Hans Reiser
2003-08-05 14:12 ` Jesse Pollard
2003-08-05 14:21 ` Stephan von Krawczynski
2003-08-05 15:53 ` Herbert Pötzl
2003-08-04 20:47 ` Jan Harkes
2003-08-04 15:42 ` Brian Pawlowski
2003-08-04 15:56 ` Stephan von Krawczynski
2003-08-04 16:16 ` Herbert Pötzl
2003-08-04 16:35 ` Stephan von Krawczynski
2003-08-04 16:54 ` Herbert Pötzl
2003-08-04 17:18 ` Stephan von Krawczynski
2003-08-04 17:25 ` Herbert Pötzl
2003-08-04 21:38 ` Jesse Pollard
2003-08-05 0:06 ` Stephan von Krawczynski
2003-08-05 3:11 ` Neil Brown
2003-08-04 21:29 ` Jesse Pollard
2003-08-04 23:42 ` Stephan von Krawczynski
2003-08-05 16:46 ` viro
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