Subject: Re: symlink-to-dir-race-free unlink/rmdir
To: Bill Sommerfeld <firstname.lastname@example.org>
From: Greg Hudson <ghudson@MIT.EDU>
Date: 03/07/1999 15:21:35
Previous conversations about the symlink race have included
suggestions for an inherited per-process flag to avoid symlinks. I
like that approach better, since you can use all your familiar
command-line tools in a symlink-free environment, like:
cd /var/tmp && nosymlinks sh -c 'find . -type f -print | xargs rm -f'
(No, you wouldn't want to run that actual find/xargs command for
various reasons, but that's irrelevant.) Nobody suggested a
"nomountpoints," but that could be done too. Or there could be one
command that does both. Whatever.
Of course, doing it on a per-syscall-invocation level gives the
application more flexibility, but I don't know that the flexibility is