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Most of Apps break hardlinks system!
Posted: 2018-12-19 11:20
by bester69
Hi,
Do you know why most of apps cant work with hardlinks without breaking the hardlink?..Shouldn't kernel be able to manage this at low level?. I find it extrange
There are some apps can manage hardlinks like libreoffice, most of text editors, but when working with images or movies, I saw those programs create a new file with the source breaking the hardlink (
gimp, jpegoptim, etc)..
For example, I couldnt apply jpegoptim to hardlink files, without using tweaking script.:
find ./ -name "*.jpg" -exec
jpegoptim -S70 "{}" \;
>>>
This sentence break all hardlinks when recompressing image files.
For example, To using GImp with a hardlink we would need to apply a script code like this.:
Code: Select all
#!/bin/sh
#
cp $1 $2
gimp $2
cat $2 > $1
Re: Most of Apps break hardlinks system!
Posted: 2018-12-19 14:19
by bw123
bester69 wrote:
...
Do you know why most of apps cant work with hardlinks without breaking the hardlink?..Shouldn't kernel be able to manage this at low level?. I find it extrange
...
I don't know why, but I have noticed the same in many cases. I'm not sure I'd say it was "most apps," but yeah most windows/cross platform apps that have been ported to linux seem to do this... and they do it silently. It is very annoying.
I think it might be because one way to update/overwrite a file is to delete it and replace it with a new file. Also, it seems many programmers don't understand linux from the user point of view.
Editing a file as a tmp and moving it over the link has the same result. Some aps have an "edit in place" flag, or a setting to follow symlinks, but I don't think that is consistent feature.
Code: Select all
$ echo "this is foofile" > foofile
$ ln foofile foolink
$ cat foolink
this is foofile
$ echo "this is foofiletmp" > foofiletmp
$ mv foofiletmp foolink
$ cat foolink
this is foofiletmp
$ cat foofile
this is foofile
Re: Most of Apps break hardlinks system!
Posted: 2018-12-19 15:25
by bester69
bw123 wrote:bester69 wrote:
...
Do you know why most of apps cant work with hardlinks without breaking the hardlink?..Shouldn't kernel be able to manage this at low level?. I find it extrange
...
I don't know why, but I have noticed the same in many cases. I'm not sure I'd say it was "most apps," but yeah most windows/cross platform apps that have been ported to linux seem to do this... and they do it silently. It is very annoying.
..
yeah, they do it silently... I have litle space in disk and love hardlinks to work with.
For example, for using "
jpegoptim" with "
find" I had to create a wrapper script to proccess operations and keep unbroken hardlinks.
Example.:
Code: Select all
#!/bin/bash
#
find . -name "*.jpg" -maxdepth 1 -exec /home/user/scripts/jpegminfind.sh "{}" \;
Code: Select all
#!/bin/bash
#
TAG="$1"
cp "$TAG" "$TAG".bak
jpegoptim -S70 "$TAG".bak
cat "$TAG".bak >"$TAG"
rm "$TAG".bak
We will have to be carefully
Re: Most of Apps break hardlinks system!
Posted: 2018-12-21 19:21
by bw123
bester69, do you think there might be a way to tweak the fs to change this? I don't think it's a kernel issue, probably something in the way the filesystem presents the file to the thing opening it? Does every app opening a file need to test for hard link and warn, or test on save? Most apps ask, "Do you want to replace?" but they don't mention that you will replace a link with a file.
Heck yeah, VERY annoying.
Re: Most of Apps break hardlinks system!
Posted: 2018-12-21 19:58
by bester69
bw123 wrote:bester69, do you think there might be a way to tweak the fs to change this? I don't think it's a kernel issue, probably something in the way the filesystem presents the file to the thing opening it? Does every app opening a file need to test for hard link and warn, or test on save? Most apps ask, "Do you want to replace?" but they don't mention that you will replace a link with a file.
Heck yeah, VERY annoying.
You're right; we need a smart solution here, I guess Filesystem and kernel should work together to manage an intelligence solution.
Furthermore, Graphicals desktop should add some kind of shortcut symbol/arrow to show they're hardlinks.. I think Torvalds might no be very pro hardlinks ways.
Re: Most of Apps break hardlinks system!
Posted: 2018-12-22 09:45
by p.H
bester69 wrote:Filesystem and kernel should work together to manage an intelligence solution.
This is neither a kernel nor filesystem issue. It is a userland issue.
When userland asks the kernel to :
- open file A in read mode
- create/open file B in write mode
- read into A
- write into B
- move/rename B to A (which implies removing A)
How should the kernel figure out that it should actually copy the contents of B into A and remove B instead of the expected specified behaviour ? The userland should explicitly ask for this if this is what it wants. Hardlinks and symlinks are basic Unix filesystem features. Userland has to deal with them.