Umm, that's a special case. I made the /proc symlinks work the way _I_
personally think symlinks should work, but for "normal" symlinks the
standard UNIX behaviour is that they are always of mode lrxwrxwrxw..
I have a few other "sick" ideas for symlinks if I would like to extend
them:
- permission checks according to mode bits (not just for /proc). The
kernel actually does this already, it's just that the /proc filesystem
is the only filesystem that has other than full read/write.
- setgid/setuid links would change the fsgid/fsuid for the process that
follows them for the duration of the lookup to the group/owner of the
symlink.
Especially the second point is "strange". But it could be very useful for
allowing controlled r/w access to _certain_ files without allowing general
execute access to the directory the files reside in. It would be a huge
security hole if used incorrectly, though (like doing a root setuid
symlink to a directory, and then people do a
vi directory/../../../etc/passwd
heh ;)
Linus