ADSM-L

Re: (U)Symbolic links in archives?

2015-10-04 17:53:21
Subject: Re: (U)Symbolic links in archives?
From: Monte Ambrose [SMTP:ambrosem AT US.IBM DOT COM]
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Brian

We are looking into re-doing the way ADSM handles symbolic links.   I agree
that it definitely needs changes.   Currently we are looking into making
ADSM consistent with the way it backs up symbolic links for Archive and
Backup.   One possible solution: Followsymbolic=yes will not follow the
link
for both.  Followsymbolic=no will not follow the link for both.  We do not
like
to add to many options but perhaps Archive and Backup should have their own
option for Followsymbolic.  Does anyone have input into how this might
affect
them?  Currently if we follow a link and it results in a looping situation
we
detect it and we end the loop.  If you have a situation where you are
getting
into a loop because of this then you should pursue through technical
support
because it is a bug.

Thank You,  Monte Ambrose
  ADSM Client Development



ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU on 09/04/98 12:31:13 PM
Please respond to ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
cc:
Subject: Re: (U)Symbolic links in archives?


On 4 Sep 1998, Dennis A. Haas wrote:

>  We recently had this question come up.  The answer can be found in the
>  "Using the UNIX Bacakup-Archive Clients", Version 3 manual, page 20;
>
>  "....In some operations, such as backup, only the path information that
>  the symbolic link contains is backed up.  In other operations, such as
>  archive, the file to which the symbolic link points to is archived, but
>  under the name of the symbolic link."
>
>  So, It looks like archive ALWAYS follows the symbolic link, regardless
>  of what value the FOLLOWSYMBOLIC parameter has.

Yeah... but what if I don't want it to always follow the links?  What if
I commonly have situations where symbolic links point back closer to the
root of their containing directory structure?

Say you have the following directory: /home/foo/broken
Which contain the following link:     /home/foo/broken/link -> /home/foo

So now you've got this loop which the ADSM archive operation cycles
through over and over and over until the filenames it constructs are so
long that they violate some length limit.  This type of situation occurs
quite frequently under IRIX in the .desktop directories of user home dirs
because of SGI's peculiar organization of the contents of those
directories.
You ever eat up a 150GBs of scratch media on an archive of 2GB of data
because of a silly little looping link?  Mmmmm... I have.

I would like to see support for a third value to be added to
followsymbolic option:  -followsymbolic=no-and-I-really-mean-it

-brian.
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