Rationale for hardlink in kernel postinstall scriplet

[Dave Jones]

On Fri, Jan 14, 2005 at 10:11:39AM -0500, ml2news at optonline.net wrote:
 > 	Hello,
 > 
 > I've got a question for the kernel rpm packager at RedHat (Dave?). What's
 > the idea behind this piece of code (postinstall scriptlet):
 > 
 > if [ -x /usr/sbin/hardlink ] ; then
 > pushd /lib/modules/2.6.10-1.741_FC3/build > /dev/null ; {
 >         cd /lib/modules/2.6.10-1.741_FC3/build
 >         find . -type f | while read f; do hardlink -c /lib/modules/*/build/$f $f ; done
 > }
 > popd > /dev/null
 > fi
 > 
 > The issue I've got with it is that it touches all /lib/modules/* thus
 > touching my own version of the kernel (happily changing files and
 > owner)...
 > 
 > Is this intended or just a bug?

intended.  It hardlinks all files that are identical to one copy.
This saves a *lot* of diskspace, especially when you have several
kernels installed.

		Dave