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Date: Tue, 7 Aug 2001 15:16:24 -0400 (EDT)
From: Alexander Viro <viro@math.psu.edu>
To: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
cc: Richard Gooch <rgooch@ras.ucalgary.ca>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] one of $BIGNUM devfs races
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On Tue, 7 Aug 2001, Alan Cox wrote:

> > > Very interesting. pwd should be using getcwd(2), which doesn't
> > > give a damn for inode numbers. If you have seriously old pwd binary
> > > that tries to track the thing down to root by hands - yes, it doesn't
> > > work.
> > 
> > Hm. strace suggests my pwd is walking up the path. But WTF would it
> > break? 2.4.7 was fine. What did I break?
> 
> Sounds like you are using libc5. The old style pwd should be reliable but
> its much slower and can't see across protected directory paths

It is not reliable. E.g. on NFS inumbers are not unique - 32 bits is
not enough.