From owner-freebsd-hackers Tue Apr 9 22:15:44 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from rwcrmhc51.attbi.com (rwcrmhc51.attbi.com [204.127.198.38]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0BEA837B416; Tue, 9 Apr 2002 22:15:39 -0700 (PDT) Received: from blossom.cjclark.org ([12.234.91.48]) by rwcrmhc51.attbi.com (InterMail vM.4.01.03.27 201-229-121-127-20010626) with ESMTP id <20020410051538.OUKK1143.rwcrmhc51.attbi.com@blossom.cjclark.org>; Wed, 10 Apr 2002 05:15:38 +0000 Received: (from cjc@localhost) by blossom.cjclark.org (8.11.6/8.11.6) id g3A5Fal34714; Tue, 9 Apr 2002 22:15:36 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from cjc) Date: Tue, 9 Apr 2002 22:15:36 -0700 From: "Crist J. Clark" To: Terry Lambert Cc: Julian Elischer , Dan Nelson , Michael Smith , Doug White , =?iso-8859-1?Q?Pawe=B3_Jakub_Dawidek?= , freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Hardlinks... Message-ID: <20020409221536.A34659@blossom.cjclark.org> Reply-To: cjclark@alum.mit.edu References: <3CB37C7C.6F6EE24A@mindspring.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: <3CB37C7C.6F6EE24A@mindspring.com>; from tlambert2@mindspring.com on Tue, Apr 09, 2002 at 04:42:52PM -0700 X-URL: http://people.freebsd.org/~cjc/ Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Tue, Apr 09, 2002 at 04:42:52PM -0700, Terry Lambert wrote: > Julian Elischer wrote: > > As terry knows of course, the Interjet > > had the following /etc/symlinks: (excuse linewrap) > > lrwxrwxrwx 1 root wheel 20 Mr 28 2001 crontab@ -> > > /writable/system/crontab > > lrwxrwxrwx 1 root wheel 18 Mr 28 2001 group@ -> > > /writable/system/group > > [ ... ] > > > the single root+usr partition is mounted read-only. > > Yes, but appealing to a product I had something to do with, > even if that organization wasn't mine in particular, makes > a much less powerful argument. > > The other thing that's a bit painful about that argument > is that the symlinks failed to operate as expected for > the master.passwd, if the / was mounted read/write. I > count this as a bug in the password database generation > code, but it should be noted that it can be a problem (e.g > the symlink is renamed to the backup, and the replacement > file is created in /etc; it does the right thing, if the > symlink is read-only, though...). Exactly, you can't use symlinks with the passwd(1) and pwd_mkdb(8) commands as they stand. The commands will bail when they try to create a temporary file in /etc, /etc/pw.XXXXXX if /etc is read-only. If /etc is not read-only, the symlinks will get removed and the files actually written in /etc. -- Crist J. Clark | cjclark@alum.mit.edu | cjclark@jhu.edu http://people.freebsd.org/~cjc/ | cjc@freebsd.org To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message