From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Sat, 2 Jun 2001 20:23:52 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Sat, 2 Jun 2001 20:23:42 -0400 Received: from maynard.mail.mindspring.net ([207.69.200.243]:3373 "EHLO maynard.mail.mindspring.net") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Sat, 2 Jun 2001 20:23:28 -0400 Subject: Re: symlink_prefix From: Robert Love To: Andries.Brouwer@cwi.nl Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, viro@math.psu.edu In-Reply-To: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain X-Mailer: Evolution/0.10 (Preview Release) Date: 02 Jun 2001 20:23:25 -0400 Message-Id: <991527807.771.4.camel@phantasy> Mime-Version: 1.0 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On 03 Jun 2001 01:54:43 +0200, Andries.Brouwer@cwi.nl wrote: > This evening I needed to work on a filesystem of a non-Linux OS, > full of absolute symlinks. After mounting the fs on /mnt, each > symlink pointing to /foo/bar in that filesystem should be > regarded as pointing to /mnt/foo/bar. > > Since doing ls -ld on every component of every pathname was > far too slow, I made a small kernel wart, where a mount option > -o symlink_prefix=/pathname would cause /pathname to be prepended > in front of every absolute symlink in the given filesystem > (when the symlink is followed). That works satisfactorily. unfortunately i cant speak for whether or not this patch is reengineering the work of altroot (i have no experience with it) or whether there are other similar approaches. what i can say is that this is an excellent idea -- i have often cursed having absolute symlinsk v. relative ones and this option would provide a wonderful fix to that. plus, i bet this is a rather simple and clean option. i would like to see this in the kernel if it does not tread on any other similar feature. > (i) is there already a mechanism that would achieve this? cant answer > (ii) if not, do we want something like this in the kernel? for sure. -- Robert M. Love rml@ufl.edu rml@tech9.net