ln(1) and System V

[Leslie Mikesell]

In article <1988Oct31.141701.11055 at utfyzx.uucp> harrison at utfyzx.UUCP (David Harrison) writes:
>Recently Geoff Collyer (utstat!geoff) has pointed out that under System 
>V the command:
>	ln old new
>will destroy "new" if it already exists.  Historically and under other 

Many sysV's have /etc/link which just passes its arguments to the system
call.  In some versions it is executable only by root, but that is easy
to fix.  Personally, I think that ln should have had a -f flag to delete
an existing file with the same names as the destination (but I also think
that sysV is severely crippled by not having an atomic rename).

>There certainly are lock problems under SV:  the print spooler will
>croak if it is fed a large number of jobs nearly simultaneously; a

Can someone explain this one?  Does it involve the FIFO or creating
the spooled work file?  Does uucp have the same problem?

  Les Mikesell