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Date:      Tue, 27 Jun 1995 21:48:17 -0600
From:      dkelly@iquest.com (David Kelly)
To:        Wes Santee <wsantee@wsantee.oz.net>, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Any way to get hard links to directories?
Message-ID:  <v01510102ac1675641e20@[204.177.193.231]>

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At 21:55 6/26/95, Wes Santee wrote:
>Okay, I know that you aren't supposed to be able to create a hard
>link to a directory.  In the ln(1) man page, however, it states that
>"Hard links may not normally refer to directories and may not span
>filesystems."
>
>Does that mean there is some way to create hard links to directories
>in a 'non-normal' way?  If so, are there consequences?

Dot and dot-dot are hard links to directories. Each subdirectory has a hard
link to its parent (dot-dot) in addition to a hard link to itself (dot).
You can see the hard link count in an "ls -l" listing and get a good idea
how many subdirectories are under a directory (2 less than the link count).

I think this is what was meant by, "Hard links may not normally refer to
directories..." as the writer was being exactly precise and accounting for
the dot and dot-dot links. You should not make hard directory links but is
OK for mkdir and fsck.


--
David Kelly N4HHE,   n4hhe@amsat.org,    dkelly@iquest.com
----------------------------------------------------------------
The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of its
capacity -- the rest is overhead for the operating system.





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