Re: Recursion level of symlinks limitted to five?

Andi Kleen (ak@muc.de)
Mon, 8 Mar 1999 21:34:03 +0100


On Mon, Mar 08, 1999 at 09:04:33PM +0100, Chris Wedgwood wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 08, 1999 at 07:21:30PM +0100, Andi Kleen wrote:
>
> > 5
> >
> > The reason for the small number is that the routine that parses the
> > path name in the kernel does actually recurse on symlinks. Kernel
> > stack space is very limited (~6K - stack space for interrupt handlers
> > on 2.2). To avoid overflowing the kernel stack the maximum nesting
> > has to be limited. AFAIK there are no plans to change it.
>
> I was reading somewhere that X/Open or something requires _atleast_
> 20... I forget now, so can any one confirm or deny this?

I cannot find such a requirement in my copy of Single Unix v.2.

There is a POSIX requirement that at least 8 hard links are allowed to
a single file, but that has nothing to do with symlinks.

-Andi

-- 
This is like TV. I don't like TV.

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