From owner-freebsd-hackers  Sun Jul 22 15: 1:58 2001
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Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 15:02:21 -0700
From: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com>
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To: Christoph Hellwig <hch@caldera.de>
Cc: Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au>,
	Joshua Goodall <joshua@roughtrade.net>, freebsd-fs@FreeBSD.ORG,
	freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: flags on symlinks
References: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0107222210480.25554-100000@besplex.bde.org> <3B5B2DBB.16B607E2@mindspring.com> <20010722234234.A7191@caldera.de>
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Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> > Flags are associated with inodes, and symlinks do not have
> > inodes in the common case, as they exist solely in the
> > directory entry, unless they are too long.
> >
> 
> Erm, Terry?
> 
> In FFS and derived systems symlinks take an inode.  In all other
> major filesystems I know, too.

I was thinking of immediate symlinks, which were short-lived
in FFS, rather than symlinks in immediate files.  Mea culpa.

> I haven't looked at FreeBSD's namei algorihm in detail, but in
> theory it could easily do the access checks before calling
> VOP_READLINK.  For the userspace tools: yes the two or three
> (you forgot at least mtree) the changes need to be done.
> 
> If you know an idea that implements file flags on symlinks without
> that change please tell it.

Make chflags not follow links, and follow the links in user
space, unless a "-l" is specified, meaning "apply this to the
link, instead of following it".

-- Terry

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