[ET Trac] [Einstein Toolkit] #453: Formaline deletes files if lib and src are symlinks

[Einstein Toolkit]

#453: Formaline deletes files if lib and src are symlinks
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  Reporter:  barry.wardell  |       Owner:     
      Type:  defect         |      Status:  new
  Priority:  major          |   Milestone:     
 Component:  Cactus         |     Version:     
Resolution:                 |    Keywords:     
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Comment (by hinder):

 It looks like the "link" command is first resolving the symlink to the
 original directory, and it appears from the description here

   http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/link.html

 that this is the POSIX behaviour (this is not said explicitly, but it is
 implied in the discussion of resolving symlinks).  On Mac OS, where hard
 links to directories are allowed, this leads to a directory hard link dir4
 which should have the same inode as dir3.  Hence when you do a recursive
 delete on dir4, the contents of dir3 are deleted as well.  This is
 probably one of the reasons that hard links to directories are not
 generally supported in Unix, and as far as I can tell, cannot be created
 using the "ln" command, only by the underlying "link" system call.  On
 Linux, where hard links to directories are not allowed, it looks like the
 Perl "link" command is either not resolving the symlink, and hence
 creating a hard link to the symlink, or it is creating a new symlink to
 the dir2 resolved symlink.  You could check the inode of the symlink to
 find out which.

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Ticket URL: <https://trac.einsteintoolkit.org/ticket/453#comment:5>
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