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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!feed1.news.erols.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!news-peer.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!sprint!EU.net!newsfeed.Austria.EU.net!siemens.at!news From: Peter Schurek <Peter.Schurek@siemens.at> Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Q: Recursive Link; Bug or Feature ? Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 15:25:03 +0200 Organization: PSE TN143; Siemens AG, Austria Lines: 28 Message-ID: <3365F6AF.912@siemens.at> Reply-To: Peter.Schurek@siemens.at NNTP-Posting-Host: firix.siemens.at Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 2.02 (OS/2; I) Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:39924 Hi ! Recently I set up the following directory structure: mkdir /var/spool/ftp/pub # the anonymous ftp public directory mkdir /usr/home/WWW # the document root of my httpd server ln -s /var/spool/ftp/pub /usr/home/WWW/pub I then tried to copy some files into /var/spool/ftp/pub to test the ftp access of the lynx browser: cp -r /usr/home/WWW/* /var/spool/ftp/pub After a few seconds I became alerted by a steady lit HD LED and started to act rationally and cancelled the cp command. Obviously, recursively copying a directoy to itself lacks a termination condition (other than just running out of space) and is therefore a bad thing. Of course, I consider this my fault, but I am still interested on whether I did just something qualifying me as DAAZ (Duemmster Administrator aller Zeiten) or stumbled across some murky RTFM area concerning soft links, or just an unresolved problem area of the UNIX (or just BSD ?) file system implementation ? Regards, Peter