Symbolic links and RFS
Claus Tondering
ct at dde.uucp
Thu May 18 21:30:24 AEST 1989
System V Release 4.0 will support both symbolic links and RFS.
Question: If a remote file is a symbolic link, will that symbolic link
be interpreted on the remote machine or on the client?
Consider the following scenario:
Remote machine:
File /alpha/foo is a symbolic link containing "/beta/foo".
File /beta/foo contains text "Hello".
Directory /alpha has been advertised as resource ALPHA.
My machine:
Resource ALPHA has been mounted as /gamma.
File /beta/foo contains text "Good bye".
I now read from file /gamma/foo. Will I read "Hello" or "Good bye"?
Either answer seems to break the transparentness of RFS:
If the symbolic link is interpreted on the remote machine, I cannot
create a remote file as a symbolic link to one of my local files. This
is not transparent.
If the symbolic link is interpreted on the local machine, the contents
of a remote file (in this case the file "foo" under resource ALPHA) depends
on the eyes that see it. This is not transparent. And it is also rather
useless.
--
Claus Tondering
Dansk Data Elektronik A/S, Herlev, Denmark
E-mail: ct at dde.dk or ...!uunet!mcvax!dkuug!dde!ct
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