Subject: Re: bug#6960: mv refuses to move a symlink over a hard link to the same file

From: Eric Blake <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 04 Jan 2012 14:01:52 -0700

tag 6960 - notabug
reopen 6960
thanks

On 01/04/2012 01:53 PM, Jim Meyering wrote:
>>> mv --backup=numbered is not atomic; it expands to two rename() syscalls,
>>> between which the target doesn’t exist at all.
> 
> Oh!  Amazing that suboptimal behavior has persisted in coreutils for so long.
> 
>> Maybe we should fix that, to make mv --backup use link()/rename() rather
>> than rename()/rename(), so that there is no window where the target
>> doesn't exist.
> 
> No "maybe" about it ;-)

In which case we'd better reopen this bug.

-- 
Eric Blake   [email-masked]    +1-919-301-3266
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org