Date: Thu, 29 Apr 1993 18:04:14 +0200
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
From: Werner Vogels <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: %$@&* symbolic links @#$%&*
Could somebody at Transarc please put in the documentation that
you better not create symbolic links to files that begin with a
# or a % because they will be recognized by AFS as being volume
mount points and not pointing to orginal file:
touch #tempfile
ls -l #tempfile
-rw-rw-r-- 1 werner 300 0 Apr 29 17:58 #tempfile
ln -s #tempfile templink
ls -l templink
ls: templink: No such device
rm templink
rm: cannot stat templink: No such device
fs ls templink
'templink' is a mount point for volume '#tempfil'
fs rm templink
Took the guys who working on this application that used tempfile
starting with quite a while to figure out what wrong and why all
their links disappeared in AFS.
Then they came to complain about compatibility .... @#$*&^%$
--
Werner
I've always wondered why AFS also has this problem with symbolic links
that begin with '$'. I can see how things could get messed up for
'#' and '%' since they correspond to normal and rw mount points.
Are there (or were there ever) any types of mount points buried in
the AFS code that use '$'?
Warning for those who wish to experiment with this:
On my 3.2 client I can reproduce the above situation with
a link text starting with '#'. With a link text starting
with '$', however, the last fs rmm will fail. You'll have
to bos salvage the volume to toss the link, I think.
Alternative solutions welcome.
I found this out when we installed a version of Mentor Graphics'
software, which is heavily into '$' prefaced files.
Steve
