Re: Bug#40706: AMENDMENT 17/7/99] /usr/share/doc vs. /usr/doc transition

[Roman Hodek <Roman.Hodek@informatik.uni-erlangen.de>]

> First of all, I should make it clear that in practice, this is
> probably even *less* important than the previous technical objection.
> But it is, still, a *technical* problem, however minor.
> 													  
> The limitation can be found in fs/ext2/symlink.c, in the function
> ext2_follow_link(), where it says:					
> 													  
> 		  if (current->link_count > 5) {				
> 				  iput (dir);							
> 				  iput (inode);						
> 				  return -ELOOP;						
> 		  }											
> 													  
> I'm a little fuzzy on how this is triggered, though.

Just a technical note :-) : This code is only present in 2.0 kernels,
in 2.2 it's gone (together with the limit).

[...]
> I *believe* that's how it works, but for the actual details, well,
> UTSL.  :-)

Your believing is correct, as a quick look into the sources prooves.
current->link_count (associated with a process) is increased whenever
a symlink target is looked up and decreased afterwards.

Roman