Problem with patch and infinit directories

Guy Harris guy at rlgvax.UUCP
Fri Jan 18 14:43:53 AEST 1985


> > The restriction about linking directories is built into
> > the link program.
> 
> Not in 4.2BSD it's not!  I think it was in the 4.1 kernel as well.
> (I haven't seen any other kernel sources, so I wouldn't know about
> V6/V7/Sn.)

All UNIX systems since V6 (and probably some before, although I think
some VERY early versions - like the assembly-language ones) have only
allowed the super-user to make links to directories.  On the other hand,
the original poster asked how "root" could create a directory which referenced
itself without writing directly to the file system; since it was "root", there
were no restrictions on the "link" call for them.

	Guy Harris
	{seismo,ihnp4,allegra}!rlgvax!guy



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