NFS and links... please explain ../../private/usr/lib

[Cris.Fuhrman at a.coe.wvu.wvnet.edu]

Hello everyone.

I've got another 'stupid' question for you.  Same set up as all the other
letters I've sent:  Some Sun 3/60's off a server running Sun OS 3.2.

Can someone tell me why it's necessary to put the link for /usr/lib/uucp
to be

lrwxrwxrwx  1 root   34 Jun  3  1988 uucp -> ../../private.MC68020/usr/lib/uucp

Why couldn't it be /private.MC68020/usr/lib/uucp ?  The reason I'm asking
is that I can't get my /usr/lib/sendmail.cf to be readable from all of my
clients (it needs to be linked to /private/usr/lib/sendmail.cf).  An ls -l
of the server machine (where /usr is physically located)
/usr/lib/sendmail.cf is as follows:

lrwxrwxrwx  1 root  33 Dec 21 10:37 sendmail.cf -> ../../private/usr/lib/send
mail.cf

For example, if I'm on a client machine (/usr is nfs mounted) and cd
/usr/lib, all works fine (I can read all the files with o+r modes).  At
that point, if I type cd ../.. (I'd think I'd be back at root), I get 

  ../..: Permission denied

If I do ls -lad .., it says .. not found.

cd / works fine.

>From the server, ls -ld /usr yields

lrwxrwxrwx  1 root       11 Jun  3 1988 /usr -> usr.MC68020/

and ls -ld /usr/lib yields

drwxr-xr-x 21 bin     4096 Dec 21 15:46 lib/

Anyone care to comment?

I'm pretty frustrated about the NFS cross mounting kludge... Just when I 
thought I was beginning to like unix...

-Cris