Subject: Re: Hard links broken?
From: "Nicolas Williams" <[email-masked]>
To: Randall R Schulz <[email-masked]>
Cc: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 29 Dec 2002 22:13:48 -0600

On Sun, Dec 29, 2002 at 10:32:40AM -0800, Randall R Schulz wrote:
> Nicolas,
> 
> You've got something else going on. I, too, am running Cygwin 1.3.17 
> ('cause of my other problems with 1.3.18) and hard links work fine for me.

I see that 1.3.18 just came out.

> I assume you are using an NTFS file system, right? FAT file systems don't 
> support hard links.

Yes, NTFS, on XP.  Er, no!  That's the problem!  I'd never bothered
checking (it's a single user laptop, used mostly for mutt/vim [and
Cygwin])), but the c: drive is FAT32 while the d: drive is NTFS (the
install disks give no partitioning or filesystem options either - it's
40%/60% FAT32/NTFS fot c:/d: - geez).

So, Cygwin must have been emulating hardlinks on FAT32 and that support
must now be gone.  Geez.

Thanks, that about clears it up.

> I have noticed that Cygwin's link code falls back to copying for more 
> reasons than just lack of support for hard links in the underlying file 
> system. If I knew more about what variety of failures in attempting to 
> create a hard link will cause Cygwin to fall back to copying the file, I'd 
> tell you, but I just remember seeing other things do it.

Hmmm, I guess I could dig into the code... if I hadn't just figured it
out (see below).

> What are the ownership and permissions of the directory in which the files 
> involved reside? How do they relate to the user (id) making the attempt?

CACLS complained that it works only on NTFS - that was the giveaway,
thanks.  Hard links work just fine on the NTFS partition.  Time to
convert c: to NTFS.

> Randall Schulz
> 
> P.S. Nicolas, please subscribe to the list, at least for as long it takes 
> to get this issue resolved.

No need anymore, thanks.

Cheers,

Nico
-- 

--
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Bug reporting:         http://cygwin.com/bugs.html
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/