Re: unlink system call on directories - Bug + fix

Andrew M. Bishop (amb@gedanken.demon.co.uk)
Mon, 18 Nov 1996 07:23:09 GMT

Kenneth Albanowski <kjahds@kjahds.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 15 Nov 1996, Andrew M. Bishop wrote:
>
> > Even worse for NFS, the unlink() call will succeed on directories.
> > The inode will disapear, only to be found in lost+found on the
> > file server next time it is fsck'd.
>
> This can't be right. If this does occur, it is the server's fault, not the
> client.

The same filesystem, exported from SunOS 4.1.1, mounted on SunOS 4.1.4
does not allow directories to be unlinked. So I conclude that the
server is not wrong. The Linux kernel should know that the file is a
directory and not even try to unlink it since it knows it is not
allowed.

-- 
Andrew.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Andrew M. Bishop                             amb@gedanken.demon.co.uk
                                      http://www.gedanken.demon.co.uk/