Time machine works(ed) via hard links
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But why does that mean that if I create a hard link myself it will be dangerous?
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Who says it’s dangerous?
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I've heard it over and over again.
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Ah, no clue, I’ve never heard that! Used hardlinks heavily on HFS+ without issue.
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Hard links to directories can create cycles in what otherwise would be a tree structure. These cycles could confuse tools that traverse directories, creating loops.
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Linux literally doesn't allow directory hard links. OSX claims not to in the manual and only supports them for internal use in Time Machine (and you should pretend they don't exist).
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I've always understood that it was because it was (essentially) invisible. So, if you deleted the file from one place, it would disappear from every other place it was linked, which may not have been what you wanted.
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You seem confused. The behavior you’re describing is literally the opposite of how unlink(2) actually works. You can’t have dangling hard links. You can, however, very easily have dangling symlinks.
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I don’t think I even implied that deleting a hard-linked file would leave a dangling link? I’m lost.
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Uhh... “So, if you deleted the file from one place, it would disappear from every other place it was linked”
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Yes. It simply disappears. There’s nothing left hanging. What am I missing here?
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The other file isn’t effected. The deletion only affects the name you deleted. The other name and all of the contents still exist in it. The same cannot be said for modifying the file however, if you modify the files contents inplace both copies are changed which is not obvious.
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Hard links are awesome! You can also use them in clever rsync setups to do incremental backups that don’t get confused when you move files around. See Gilles’ answer here.https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/102620/rsync-that-handles-moves-sensibly …
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I tried to delete some long-time abandoned habitat studio started on my home dir on linux. No, I didn’t have backups, and the years of piled up garbage is now gone.
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It’s dangerous because in-place mutation of files happens, and when it does you’re causing spooky action at a distance.
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Also rm -rf of hardlink -> symlink -> dir leads to some fun expected data loss on hfs
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I wonder if that’s an issue on apfs...
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rm -rf traversal through hard links on OSX can lead to unexpected data loss:https://github.com/broccolijs/broccoli/issues/88 …
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This may be a feature to some and a bug to others
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@thomasABoyt had a good reproduction:https://gist.github.com/thomasboyt/9935811 …
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), where does the alleged risk come from?