Re: Proposal: restrict link(2)
Richard Gooch (rgooch@atnf.csiro.au)
Tue, 17 Dec 1996 15:39:30 +1100
Albert Cahalan writes:
>
> From: Snow Cat <snowcat@netgate.net>
>
> >> I'm always asking *why* (for which reason, or maybe better which
> >> purpose) something is done/allowed/not allowed/implemented/...
> >> for the question "why is a user allowed to create hard like to
> >> files of other users" I haven't found any positive answer yet
> >> (please don't tell me "that's UNIX fs semantics" again;)
> >> and I found/read no answer so far what we'd break if we would
> >> change the behaviour of link(). I still think that it *absolute*
> >> no real application will be affected...
> >
> > Hard links are pretty useful for sharing large files. When I was in
> > university, I used to make links to large programs compiled by other
> > users - like gdb, irc, etc. In this way it didn't take any additional
> > disk space and if the owner deleted the program later, I still had a
> > copy.
>
> If the owner deleted the program because they ran out of disk quota,
> you made sure that _they_ still owned a copy. You did not have a copy.
Assuming quotas are being used in the first place...
> I'd say this is a reason to restrict link() to the file owner.
This should be a generic mount option (quotas are irrelevant),
disabled by default.
Regards,
Richard....