Too many levels of symbolic links

dwater · 03-31-2004, 12:19 PM

Hi,

I have created a directory heirarchy which goes 6 levels deep. In each directory is a symlink to a file in the parent directory. If you follow the links, they all end up in the top level directory.

So, I get the above error message. Seems fairly self-explanitory. Looks like I am hitting a limit somewhere (looks like it is '6' or thereabouts, so it's only my deepest layer that fails).

Anyone know how I can adjust this limit?

Max.

PS RedHat 9.0

wapcaplet · 03-31-2004, 12:44 PM

From what I can tell by some quick googling, there is a limit on link depth (I believe enforced by the filesystem) to prevent possible infinite-recursion problems. A pathological example:

touch a
ln -s a b
rm a
ln -s b a

You'd have an infinite loop when trying to do something with either file (since they each link to the other). The limit is probably adjustable, but my advice, if you want all the links to end up in the top-level directory, is just to make links directly to the top level.

dwater · 03-31-2004, 05:49 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by wapcaplet
From what I can tell by some quick googling, there is a limit on link depth (I believe enforced by the filesystem) to prevent possible infinite-recursion problems. A pathological example:

touch a
ln -s a b
rm a
ln -s b a

You'd have an infinite loop when trying to do something with either file (since they each link to the other). The limit is probably adjustable, but my advice, if you want all the links to end up in the top-level directory, is just to make links directly to the top level.

I guess it's fairly easy to write a script to make them all point to the corresponding number of '..' up to the top level, but it is so much easier to just make it point to the one above.

I understand your explanation, but such a small limit seems very restrictive if the intention is to detect an infinite number of links....I feel like I would want to adjust it anyway.

Thanks though.

Max.