Bug 5664

Summary:	installation messes up symlinks
Product:	[Retired] Red Hat Linux	Reporter:	mw
Component:	installer	Assignee:	Matt Wilson <msw>
Status:	CLOSED RAWHIDE	QA Contact:
Severity:	high	Docs Contact:
Priority:	high
Version:	6.1	CC:	alex, mw
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	i386
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2000-02-14 13:04:51 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description mw 1999-10-07 02:00:29 UTC

I thinks this has nothing to do with the symlinks package
---but I had to choose a component.

I just upgraded to 6.1 (via ftp) from 6.0.  I chose to
upgrade, and not to customize the packages to upgrade. I was
 almost at the end of the installation when I get an error
 message that  prompts me if I want to debug.  I did not, so
 the system went down, but could never come back.

With my old rescuse disk, I booted, and noticed that / was
 full. The reason it was full was that my three symlinks

doc -> ../hda5/usr/doc
share -> ../hda5/usr/share
src -> ../hda5/usr/src

in /usr got removed by the installation, and got replaced by
 actual directories

/usr/doc, /usr/share, /usr/src

This of course, ate up the 300+M freespace on /.

Curious, I verified this behavior one more time: I
 reinstated the symlinks, again ran the upgrade, and again
 the above symlinks got removed.

Here is the relevan partition table, in case you decide to
 try to duplicate my observation:

/dev/hda1   *         1       128   1028128+  83  Linux
/dev/hda2           129       525   3188902+   5  Extended
/dev/hda5           129       218    722893+  83  Linux
/dev/hda6           219       308    722893+  83  Linux
/dev/hda7           309       317     72261   82  Linux swap

Mate

------- Additional Comments From   10/20/99 17:11 -------
It seems it is crucial that my symlinks are *relative* symlinks.
When I use absolute links, all seem well.

Mate

Comment 1 Jay Turner 2000-02-14 13:04:59 UTC

I was able to perform an upgrade from 6.1 to the beta for 6.2 without any
problems.  Note that I was using symbolic links for this upgrade.  So, I think
this issue might be resolved.  Please reopen if you are still having problems.