Re: [PATCH] one of $BIGNUM devfs races

Alexander Viro
2001-08-07T19:16:48Z

On Tue, 7 Aug 2001, Alan Cox wrote:

> > > Very interesting. pwd should be using getcwd(2), which doesn't
> > > give a damn for inode numbers. If you have seriously old pwd binary
> > > that tries to track the thing down to root by hands - yes, it doesn't
> > > work.
> >
> > Hm. strace suggests my pwd is walking up the path. But WTF would it
> > break? 2.4.7 was fine. What did I break?
>
> Sounds like you are using libc5. The old style pwd should be reliable but
> its much slower and can't see across protected directory paths

It is not reliable. E.g. on NFS inumbers are not unique - 32 bits is
not enough.