Re: slashes in filenames [was Re: Error while trying to install openssh-server on Buster]

[Greg Wooledge <wooledg@eeg.ccf.org>]

On Fri, Jul 24, 2020 at 09:42:24AM -0400, The Wanderer wrote:
> On 2020-07-24 at 09:22, tomas@tuxteam.de wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, Jul 24, 2020 at 07:54:27AM -0400, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> > 
> >> On Fri, Jul 24, 2020 at 07:49:26AM -0400, The Wanderer wrote:
> >> 
> >>> Sounds like a case where directly editing the underlying device,
> >>> to modify inode-or-equivalent contents such that the slash is no
> >>> longer
> >             ^^^^^
> > Nitpick: the directory entry is the one carrying the name.
> 
> I had the impression that even a directory is stored in/as something
> that is at least analogous to an inode. Is there a different term that's
> more appropriate for the on-disk structure which holds a directory, vs.
> 'inode' for the one that holds a file?

I don't know of any specific term for a directory's physical
manifestation, other than "directory".

In the olden days, a directory was basically a series of 16-byte
records (14 bytes for the filename, 2 bytes for the inode number),
repeated as necessary.  You used to be able to cat a directory and
see this.  Under current Debian systems, we've lost this ability,
which makes me sad.  The kernel and libc have conspired to hide the
contents of the directory from view, by making it an error to try
to read one using standard read(2) calls.