[Techtalk] symlinks

[Maria McKinley]

Melissa Meyer wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 02, 2007 at 03:26:36PM -0700, Cynthia Kiser wrote:
> 
>>>Also, if anyone know what this really means:
>>>
>>>Don't use unix symlinks. Just don't. With a symlink a file/directory 
>>>"exists" twice, something AFP doesn't allow. There's currently no way 
>>>this can be resolved, as we either end up with two file/dirs having the 
>>>same id, or a file having two parents. If you still insist on using 
>>>them, be aware you're heavily  violating the specs. You have been warned...
>>>
>>>So, will the symlinks just be ignored, or will it cause problems with 
>>>the symlinks when used on the linux machine? It seems a weird, 
>>>threatening paragraph, and I'm not sure there is really much affect, 
>>>other than it just doesn't work when the volume is mounted.
>>
>>I don't know what the failure mode would be. From my 30 seconds of
>>google-acquired knowledge about netatalk, I would say that old Mac's
>>didn't have symlinks, so the appletalk protocol doesn't specify how
>>they would be treated. What are you using netatalk to do and that
>>might help folks guess what might be problematic.
>>
> 
> 
> Symlinks do work with the new netatalk.  I don't exactly remember the
> issue with the statement above.  It may have something to do with how
> hfs+ handles files and aliases.
> 

Well, that is good news, since after looking at the links, it looks like 
there are all sorts of links that users haven't created themselves:

./mihali/.kde/tmp-miles
./mike/.#newdotemacs

Is there also really an 8 character limit on passwords? That seems 
rather a pain, and is the other thing causing me to hesitate from updating.

thanks,
maria