On Sun, Sep 14, 2014 at 6:09 PM, Brandon Allbery <[email protected]>
wrote:

> On Sun, Sep 14, 2014 at 6:07 PM, Bill Bogstad <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> I think you are thinking of /bin/ln which was how normal users were
>> supposed to make
>> links to files (with /bin/rm being the way to remove them)
>>
>
> Just to repeat what you claim to be replying to: "ln was, even then, a
> bit too "user friendly" to make hardlink-style lock files safely." In what
> way does that indicate that I have confused /etc/link with /bin/ln?
>

A specific case in point: even back then, if the *target* was a directory,
/bin/ln silently created the link in that directory. There were cases when
this allowed either hijacking or "hiding" the lockfile (consider renaming
the directory right after the lockfile is created); if working from a shell
script, either you needed to write a C program or use /etc/link to safely
handle this case.

-- 
brandon s allbery kf8nh                               sine nomine associates
[email protected]                                  [email protected]
unix, openafs, kerberos, infrastructure, xmonad        http://sinenomine.net
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