don fisher wrote:
Are there advantages to using rbind over the link? From your description is sounds as though they result in the same structure. If I have time to learn LVM I may try that option. I never considered partitions of any value, so I never employed them in the past.
I used the symlink type solution in the past as well. Problem is some software will see a symlink and think it is not a real 'dir', and simply overwrite it. For example, if you were to untar an image that wanted to write into the "symlinked" directory you created, 'tar', would likely, by default, overwrite the symlink rather than following it. There are multiple programs that get fussy with symlinks just like there are a growing number of ones that get fussy about what permissions you put on your files. But as a real life example of a an installer overwriting symlinks -- cygwin puts a linux/unix like layer overwindows, and in doing so, they made the windows' version of sub-dir-mounts (junctions made with linkd or mountvol), *look* like the symlinks you make with "mklink". As a result when you install SW, it just overwrites your local mount structure causing rather chaotic results. So if it looks like a symlink -- and you install software into the "virtual dir" that you get with the symlink, there is a fair chance it will remove your symlink and install itself on the underlying disk. In your case, it sound like you were just going to use it for user files and not installed apps, so you are probably safe, but if you install something into the symlinked location, the installer may get rid of the symlink for fear it is pointing somewhere it shouldn't (like your system directory) and since most people won't even notice the difference in a symlinked dir, it's too easy for 'crackers' to use the symlinks for bad things -- so the choice to follow them or not is often not left to the user (i.e. the owner of the system). Oh, another difference, is that many recursive utilities won't follow symlinks by default (though many have options to do so). But you have to know which utils respect symlinks and which don't AND know which ones allow you to work around them. The *nix 'find' command has 3 top-level switches for changing symlink behavior (see 'man find' First line of the options descriptions talks about them).... Basically if what you have works for you, don't change it, but later on, it's good to know that some software may not work w/your choices and at least know what other options are available. BTW, if you respond to an email, don't feel you have to copy the whole email you are responding to into the new mail unless it is needed for context. I had to scroll through tons of my own writing till I got to yours... (*poor me!*) ;-) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org