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Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1997 17:59:07 +1100
From: Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au>
Message-Id: <199702210659.RAA31725@godzilla.zeta.org.au>
To: hackers@freebsd.com, thompson@tgsoft.com
Subject: Re: ln -s -f does unlink of dir
Cc: bugs@freebsd.org
Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org
X-Loop: FreeBSD.org
Precedence: bulk

>On my 2.1.6 system i had a directory /usr/src/sys. Elsewhere in the
>filesystem i stupidly did a ln -s -f /u/FreeBSD/src/* /usr/src. To my
>immense surprise, ln unlinked /usr/src/sys! fsck'ing /usr proved that
>this was true.
>
>I suppose everybody but me knew about that, though?

Perhaps not.  `ln -sf' is buggy and attempts to unlink /usr/src/sys.
This can only succeed as root.  2.1.x permits root to unlink directories
although 2.2 and -current don't.

Bruce