Symlinks vs. NFS

[David Elliott]

In article <2372 at quacky.mips.COM> dce at mips.COM (David Elliott) writes:
>We have run across a problem with NFS and symlinks that we would like
>to solve.
>
>Assume you have a remote path that is actually a symlink.

I've gotten a number of responses, and I think I need to add something.

We're trying to solve the problem for our systems as distributed,
not just our in-house systems.  We can easily go through our internal
machines and fix their symlinks, but we can't assume that customers
will be using our method of organization.

So, as a first shot, I'd like to suggest that there be a modification
to symlinks that a special leading symbol mean 'root of the machine
on which this file resides'.  For the sake of starting some discussion,
I'll suggest '...', though I realize that there may be conflicts.

So, if I point /usr/ucb/newaliases at '.../usr/lib/sendmail', this
would imply "go to the root of the remote machine and then go down
to usr/lib/sendmail".  Obviously, this has to take into account
whether or not the final file is remotely mounted.

-- 
David Elliott		dce at mips.com  or  {ames,prls,pyramid,decwrl}!mips!dce