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Date: Thu, 16 May 1996 02:21:56 +0300 (EET DST)
From: lamuh@stoat.riga.lv
Reply-To: lamuh@stoat.riga.lv
To: FreeBSD-gnats-submit@freebsd.org
Subject: ln -F dir1 dir2
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>Number:         1205
>Category:       bin
>Synopsis:       hardlinked directories can be created but not deleted
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       serious
>Priority:       high
>Responsible:    peter
>State:          closed
>Quarter:
>Keywords:
>Date-Required:
>Class:          sw-bug
>Submitter-Id:   current-users
>Arrival-Date:   Wed May 15 16:20:02 PDT 1996
>Closed-Date:    Wed May 15 19:26:03 PDT 1996
>Last-Modified:  Fri May 24 14:52:35 PDT 1996
>Originator:     bofh
>Release:        FreeBSD 2.2-CURRENT i386
>Organization:
>Environment:

	

>Description:

	theres an undocumented option to ln(1), it is ``-F''.
	it allows to hardlink directories. seems that there is no
	way to delete these directories. so, fsck(8) should be done
	three times to correct this problem.

>How-To-Repeat:

	# cd /tmp
	# mkdir dir1
	# ln -F dir1 dir2
	# rmdir dir1
	rmdir: dir1: Directory not empty
	#

>Fix:
	
	i have no ideas how to fix it.
>Release-Note:
>Audit-Trail:
State-Changed-From-To: open->closed 
State-Changed-By: jkh 
State-Changed-When: Wed May 15 19:26:03 PDT 1996 
State-Changed-Why:  
Patient: "Doctor, it hurts when I do _this_!" 

Doctor says: "Don't do that!" 

I'd say that this flag is undocumented for good reason. :-) 
Responsible-Changed-From-To: freebsd-bugs->peter 
Responsible-Changed-By: peter 
Responsible-Changed-When: Fri May 24 14:51:10 PDT 1996 
Responsible-Changed-Why:  
(Hmm, will this let me make a change after it's closed?) 

The ability for root to link and unlink directories has just been removed, 
so the ln -F option was deleted too.  This really was a bad mis-feature 
that opens up all sorts of race conditions and other problems.  Not to mention 
programs that expect ".." to point to the parent directory.... 
>Unformatted:
