From owner-freebsd-hackers Thu Dec 26 13:03:51 1996 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.4/8.8.4) id NAA07469 for hackers-outgoing; Thu, 26 Dec 1996 13:03:51 -0800 (PST) Received: from itsdsv1.enc.edu (itsdsv1.enc.edu [207.95.42.241]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.4/8.8.4) with ESMTP id NAA07460 for ; Thu, 26 Dec 1996 13:03:47 -0800 (PST) Received: from dingo.its.enc.edu (dingo.its.enc.edu [207.95.222.250]) by itsdsv1.enc.edu (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id PAA26430; Thu, 26 Dec 1996 15:59:37 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 26 Dec 1996 16:06:16 -0500 (EST) From: Charles Owens X-Sender: owensc@dingo.its.enc.edu To: Julian Elischer cc: J Wunsch , FreeBSD hackers , ben@narcissus.ml.org Subject: Re: multi-group file access techniques / directory hardlinks In-Reply-To: <32C2DF8C.167EB0E7@whistle.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Thu, 26 Dec 1996, Julian Elischer wrote: > Charles Owens wrote: > > > 1. The file system does in fact support directory hardlinks. (This is > > true at least to some extent, since the '.' and '..' entries are, > > in fact, directory hardlinks.) > > see below. > > > > > 2. Certain key tools do _not_ understand directory hardlinks. The ones > > that I know of are fsck, rm, and rmdir. > > > > 3. The official FreeBSD stance (that I seem to be hearing) that > > directory hardlinks are unsupported is based on: > > > > a. the insufficient status of the tool support (previous point) > > - and/or - > > b. the fact that directory hardlinks are dangerous in the > > hands of the uncareful. > > > > Am I correct here? Would someone in the know provide clarification? > > the KERNEL now disallows the 'link' operation on directories. Ok... that's very clear, but a bit terse. :-) What I'm digging for above is an expression of the rationale for this disabling (_not_ that I disagree). I certainly can see that directory hard linking should be disabled as long as support in the basic tools (rm, rmdir, fsck) is incomplete (otherwise it's a major head-ache for the user). ...But if the tool support was made complete I'm not so sure that this kernal disabling is the way to go. Perhaps there could be a options flag in the kernal config file to force directory linking to be allowed for those who need it. > > > > > As I stated in my original posting (on Dec 18), my goal is to come up with > > an optimum technique for allowing multiple groups controlled access to a > > file tree. (To my surprise, I had very little response to this posting, > > which deals with what I think is a rather interesting challenge. If you'd > > like me to repost, please holler). Essentially I'm trying to achieve a > > subset of the functionality offered by Access Control Lists as implemented > > in AIX et al. > > I never saw the original posting. I've reposted it... --- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Charles Owens Email: owensc@enc.edu "I read somewhere to learn is to Information Technology Services remember... and I've learned that Eastern Nazarene College we've all forgot..." - King's X -------------------------------------------------------------------------