Re: [PATCH 25/28] VFS: statfs(64) shouldn't follow last component symlink

[Christoph Hellwig]

On Mon, Oct 25, 2004 at 10:51:11AM -0400, Mike Waychison wrote:
> Mount-related userspace tools will require the ability to detect whether what
> looks like a regular directory is actually a autofs trigger.  To handle this,
> tools can statfs a given directory and check to see if statfs->f_type ==
> AUTOFSNG_SUPER_MAGIC before walking into the directory (and causing the a
> filesystem to automount).
> 
> To make this happen, we cannot allow statfs to follow_link.
> 
> NOTE: This may break any userspace that assumes it can statfs across a
> last-component symlink.  I can't think of any real world breakage however, as
> mount(8) will drop the real path in /etc/mtab and /proc/mounts will always
> show the true path.

Which means it's vetoed.  It's a big change in syscall semantics.  And
propabably breaks SuS (for statvfs(3) which requires full symlink
resolution when it just refers to a path on the filesystem.

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