Subject: Re: link(1) - when did it disappear?
To: None <tech-userlevel@netbsd.org>
From: Christos Zoulas <christos@zoulas.com>
List: tech-userlevel
Date: 07/18/1999 19:10:43
In article <199907181610.SAA08983@orade.oreilly.de>,
Christoph Badura <bad@oreilly.de> wrote:
>lucio@cackle.proxima.alt.za (Lucio De Re) writes:
>>Well, I think one of NetBSD's good points is its liberal approach: "Give
>>them enough rope..." type thing.  This is a piece of rope I really want
>>quite badly.
>
>>So where are the policy makers on this Sunday morning/Saturday night?
>
>The last time I remember this came up the policy makers decided that they
>don't want to sell that much rope, so to speak.

And with a good reason. Hard linking to directories changes the link count
in directory inodes which can create pathological that fsck cannot fix thus
you are able now to corrupt your filesystem beyond repair. The second reason
is that now you can create cycles in the filesystem graph, making programs
that traverse the tree to never terminate.

If you really want to do it, write your own link program; make sure that you
write an unlink with it so that you can clean up the mess :-)

christos