m ike wrote: > > >hi guys, i'd really appreciate some feed back on this symbolic > > >link issue. i did experience that my system has a limit on the > > >number of references, but the limit is large enough to be > > >inconsequential > > > > > > > > > /TMP/1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8/9/0/1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8/9/0/1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8/9/0/1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8/9/0/1/2 > > > > > > > > > looks like you are doing something wrong. even if the directories > > have only one of 2 names (eg 0 and 1) that leads to 2^42 > > > > 4,398,046,511,104 directory locations for files, my disks don't have > > that many bytes. > > sorry, i'm not following you here. i'm not sure what you > mean by "wrong". for example, i am using my hack on > a daily basis and have not notice any "ill effects". and > the directory containing the 36 a-z0-9 subdirs, each > containing 36 symbolic links and one file, well, that takes > up 148k according to df and du. i suppose i ought to > clarify that i never put anything else in there. its purpose > is just to allow me to specify arbitray paths that will test true > with -e > > so even though it is working fine for me, i am worried that > you are right -- that i am doing something "wrong". I just > don't know what that would be.
(I don't feel like trimming much) The only thing you are doing is using up DIRENTs in the directory table. The space has already been allocated, so create all the symlinks you want, you won't use up any more space. Until there needs to be more diretory tables allocated. Even then, the space used is negliglble. You will not even run out of i-nodes, as symlinks don't use those, either. The only real harm you are causing is lots of disk activity when following such symlink farms. You are not even causing any real harm at all. You may hit some directory path length limitation at some point, but as you pointed out: that is to prevent an inifinite loop from causing real problems. So have a ball with your hack. You will be hard-pressed to cause any real problems. -john -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
