I'm gonna take a crack at this.
The type keyword in the alter table command is there to convert databases
from one type to another. While yes, I do think that the MySQL team could
check if the types are the same and not recreate the table if it isn't
necessary. I don't consider it a bug that they don't. If you want to
prevent this from happening, I suggest you have an entire database on the
other partition/drive with the symlink. Then the only way your tables won't
exist over on the second drive is if you drop the database.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Christian Hammers" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2001 11:51 AM
Subject: BUG: alter table destroys symbolic links!
> Hello
>
> If table xyz is a symbolic link (recommended in the manual for very big
files
> that do not fit on a single partition) then "ALTER TABLE xyz TYPE=ISAM;"
> ignores this, removes the link and recreate the table on the data
directory.
>
> I consider it a bug, as it is
> a) not what the user expects, even repair, optimise and other alter table
> functions do not work like this
> b) a user that has no shell account has no other way to alter the table
type
> c) this can be used as a denial of service attack as mysql hangs when
> getting a "no space left" error message and this is a way to more
around
> the system administrators disk-quota settings!
>
> This was tested with the latest MySQL-3.23.35 on linux (ext2 & reiserfs,
> although this shouldn't matter in for the symlink handling)
>
> bye,
>
> -christian-
>
>
> --
> Christian Hammers WESTEND GmbH - Aachen und Dueren Tel
0241/701333-0
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] Internet & Security for Professionals Fax
0241/911879
> WESTEND ist CISCO Systems Partner - Premium Certified
>
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