Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2013 12:30:56 -0800 From: Kevin Oberman <kob6558@gmail.com> To: Matt Burke <mattblists@icritical.com> Cc: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: installworld failure due to cross-device links Message-ID: <CAN6yY1sd-WjKBCxbPgaFvHprEJ0j6jC6c5en2VnMUd02JGh9KQ@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <50F01F52.10006@icritical.com> References: <50E42264.4010609@freebsd.org> <50E4357B.7020400@freebsd.org> <50F01F52.10006@icritical.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Fri, Jan 11, 2013 at 6:18 AM, Matt Burke <mattblists@icritical.com> wrote: > On 01/02/13 13:26, Nathan Whitehorn wrote: >> Thanks for the patch! I've committed it (slightly modified) as r244958. >> I haven't taken any action on the chgrp/chown issue, though. > > Similarly, 'make distribution' fails when /root is a separate filesystem: > > cd /usr/src/etc/root; install -o root -g wheel -m 644 dot.profile > /tmproot/root/.profile; rm -f /tmproot/.profile; ln > /tmproot/root/.profile /tmproot/.profile > ln: /tmproot/.profile: Cross-device link > *** [distribution] Error code 1 > > Is there any real advantage of hard links over symlinks nowadays? Yes. In fact, hard links are essential for some purposes. Key advantage of hard links is that you can create and use them as long as needed and then just delete them. Any remaining hard links are unaffected. When the last hard link is deleted, so is the file. Symlinks, on the other hand are simply pointer to a real file and if the file is deleted, the symlink remains, but is broken. Of course, symlinks can cross file systems when hard links can't. Both are likely to remain useful and neither is appropriate for all applications. -- R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer E-mail: kob6558@gmail.com
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?CAN6yY1sd-WjKBCxbPgaFvHprEJ0j6jC6c5en2VnMUd02JGh9KQ>