On Friday 12 February 2010 05:56 PM, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote: > On Fri, 2010-02-12 at 16:02 -0800, Suvayu Ali wrote: >> On Friday 12 February 2010 05:41 AM, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote: >>> On Thu, 2010-02-11 at 23:23 -0800, Suvayu Ali wrote: >> [...] >> Okay, I now understand the aspect of "." and ".." being the only two >> hardlinks allowed for directories. However in the lwn discussion I >> linked to in my OP, one poster mentions the special case of a chroot. >> Does that mean this is something the kernel(?) decides for us, Or is it >> this treatment of "." and ".." universal? > > I'm not sure I understand what you're asking here. If something is > decided by the kernel, surely it's universal isn't it? By universal I meant something determined by the filesystem. Would the restriction still be there if I were to use ext4 with a kernel (something other than linux) that supported such hardlinks? >> So essentially since hardlinks deal with inodes directly, the best way >> to prevent the problem of recursion is to proactively forbid it instead >> of using external checks like keeping count? > > Either would do, but I suspect Ken and Dennis thought the "no hard links > to directories" rule was easier to implement. It's certainly more > efficient. > > One of the comments to the LWN article also mentions the case of Apple > allowing these links for the sake of their Time Machine backup system (I > think it's restricted to that special case so it doesn't run the risk of > a general-purpose feature). Presumably that's the main reason TM doesn't > work with non-Apple partitions, despite several NAS manufacturers > advertising that it does. I just bought an Iomega NAS partly on the > strength of this and it definitely doesn't work. I think this resolves almost all my questions. :) > > poc > -- Suvayu Open source is the future. It sets us free. -- users mailing list users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines
