Re: [PATCH] Increase recursive symlink limit from 5 to 8

[GOTO Masanori <gotom@debian.or.jp>]

At Sun, 11 Jan 2004 10:49:30 +0100,
Arjan van de Ven wrote:
> > 6 does seem pretty low.  What was the reason for setting it there?  Is
> > there a downside to increasing it?
> 
> It was reduced down from 8 because it can lead to stack overflows.
> Recursive links like this usually point at a quite broken filesystem
> setup too afaik.

But I still think 6 is too small from user level point of view, as
Petter wrote.  The example is /usr/lib library links.  I got bug
report which complained that a library want to use "bounce" link:

	/usr/lib/liba -> /etc/alternatives/liba -> /usr/lib/another/libb.

If .so file uses major.minor scheme, then /usr/lib/liba.so links:

	/usr/lib/liba.so -> /usr/lib/liba.so.2 -> /usr/lib/liba.so.2.3

and so on.  It can easily exceed 6 symlinks.  I think the correct fix
is to make VFS not to overflow stacks.  Is it allowable change?

Regards,
-- gotom