>>POSIX requires this, but it is arguably a misfeature, due to the
>>security issues mentioned.
>
> I still don't understand how this is a security issue any more than the
> whole concept of symbolic links is a security issue.
Yes, that's the problem basically. If you're about to say "touch /tmp/
Paul Eggert wrote:
>>There could be some kind of -f, --follow option so that mkdir will
>>create the directory pointed to.
>
>There is a potential security problem there, if the symbolic link
>is in a directory writable by an attacker.
I don't agree that this is a security problem, since mkdir is
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Eric Blake) writes:
> POSIX requires that touch do the equivalent of calling creat() if
> the file does not exist, then call utime() whether or not creat()
> was called. A broken symlink exists,
Not unless the program is specifically mentioned by POSIX
as one that does not fol
> > I note that 'touch foo' when foo is a broken symlink will create the
> > link destination if possible (though without making any directories,
> > obviously).
>
> POSIX requires this, but it is arguably a misfeature, due to the
> security issues mentioned. Perhaps we should add an option to "t
Eric Blake wrote:
>>There could be some kind of -f, --follow option so that mkdir will
>>create the directory pointed to. You'd probably use it together with
>>-p.
>This sounds somewhat similar to cp -f, --force. cp uses
>slightly different semantics, required by POSIX (rather than
>try to cr
"Avis, Ed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> There could be some kind of -f, --follow option so that mkdir will
> create the directory pointed to.
There is a potential security problem there, if the symbolic link
is in a directory writable by an attacker.
> You'd probably use it together with -p. T
> ln -s nonexistent foo
> There could be some kind of -f, --follow option so that mkdir will
> create the directory pointed to. You'd probably use it together with
> -p. Then 'mkdir -fp' would be a way to try everything sensible to make
> sure the destination exists and can be used as a directory
I'd like to suggest a possible new feature for mkdir and see what people
think of it.
% ln -s nonexistent foo
% mkdir foo
mkdir: cannot create directory `foo': File exists
There could be some kind of -f, --follow option so that mkdir will
create the directory pointed to. You'd probably use it to
