Crazy directory thing

[Robin Laing]

Matthew Miller wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 08, 2005 at 09:05:59AM -0600, Robin Laing wrote:
> 
> 
>>I now know why I am having problems with a couple of things I an 
>>trying to do from the CLI.  The more I think about it, the more it is 
>>a bug.  I will wait until I install FC4 to see if this is still an issue.
> 
> 
> It will be.
> 
> Bash is trying its best to do what you want -- to pretend that symlinked
> directories are bind mounts (see the man page for mount, lookit "--bind").
> But because of the nature of symlinks, sometimes that pretense can't cover
> for everything.
> 
> The two possible solutions are: 1) understand what's going on and work
> around it and 2) turn off the pretense with 'set -P'.
> 
> Oh, and of course 3) don't use symlinks for directories; use bind mounts
> instead.
> 

Another option is to use symlinks the other way around when required 
and remove them when not needed.  In my case this would solve about 
90% of the problems.

One of the Linux people here suggested creating some scripts or 
aliases to accomplish some of what I need/want to do.

It would be nice if there was an option in cp and mv to work within 
symlinked situations.  Time for a RFE?

I will have to learn about bind mounts and how to use them.  This may 
be the best option for the other 10% of situations.  Especially for 
various directories that are common across users such as music and movies.

This is fun.  :)
-- 
Robin Laing