Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-security (226 mails)

["Carlos E. R." <robin1.listas@xxxxxxxxxx>]

The Monday 2005-04-04 at 20:03 -0700, Randall R Schulz wrote:

> On Saturday 02 April 2005 03:10, Carlos E. R. wrote:
> > ...
> >
> > Quick question:
> >
> > Is there an easier way to list hardlinks, than comparing inode
> > numbers?
> 
> No. Directory entries associate names with inodes (implicitly sharing 
> the same file system device, which accounts for the prohibition on 
> cross-device links). Each reference to a particular inode is a name for 
> the file (or other file system entity). It's not as if one's the 
> "original" or "real" file and the other(s) are the links. They're all 
> coequal names for the same file system entity. This is in contrast to 
> symbolic links, in which there's a fundamental distinction between the 
> (symbolic) link and the target.
> 
> So the only way to find what names refer to the same inode is to 
> enumerate directory entries and compare inode numbers.

Ah, I see. So it is not easy as well to know if a file somewhere is 
hardlinked somewhere else, except by comparing all inode entries in all 
directory lists from the same partition/disk.

Do you know of a (brief) description of how a inode fs works, somewhere? I
come from Dos; I did study how FAT worked in detail, but unix was out of 
bounds for me at the time, and later I had no occasion to study ext2 or 
similar. So, although I have some inkling of what an inode is, I really 
don't know O:-)

-- 
Cheers,
       Carlos Robinson