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From: guy@rlgvax.UUCP (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: net.unix
Subject: Re:  Problem with patch and infinit directories
Message-ID: <366@rlgvax.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 17-Jan-85 23:43:53 EST
Article-I.D.: rlgvax.366
Posted: Thu Jan 17 23:43:53 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 21-Jan-85 02:33:53 EST
References: <7464@brl-tgr.ARPA> <2547@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Organization: CCI Office Systems Group, Reston, VA
Lines: 16

> > The restriction about linking directories is built into
> > the link program.
> 
> Not in 4.2BSD it's not!  I think it was in the 4.1 kernel as well.
> (I haven't seen any other kernel sources, so I wouldn't know about
> V6/V7/Sn.)

All UNIX systems since V6 (and probably some before, although I think
some VERY early versions - like the assembly-language ones) have only
allowed the super-user to make links to directories.  On the other hand,
the original poster asked how "root" could create a directory which referenced
itself without writing directly to the file system; since it was "root", there
were no restrictions on the "link" call for them.

	Guy Harris
	{seismo,ihnp4,allegra}!rlgvax!guy