Replace "uncompress" with a symlink

[Marcel van den Boer]

During the installation of gzip (chapter 6), the file /bin/uncompress is moved to /usr/bin. However, because uncompress is a hard link to /bin/gunzip, this move fails if /usr is on a separate partition.

I've tagged this issue as a defect, because in the chapter "Creating a New Partition", LFS instructs the reader to consider putting /usr on a separate partition, which clearly is not possible without modifying LFS a bit.

The solution is simple. In the instructions for installing gzip in chapter 6:

mv -v /bin/{gzexe,uncompress,zcmp,zdiff,zegrep} /usr/bin
mv -v /bin/{zfgrep,zforce,zgrep,zless,zmore,znew} /usr/bin

should become:

mv -v /bin/{gzexe,zcmp,zdiff,zegrep} /usr/bin
mv -v /bin/{zfgrep,zforce,zgrep,zless,zmore,znew} /usr/bin

rm -rvf /bin/uncompress
ln -sv ../../bin/gunzip /usr/bin/uncompress

[bdubbs@…]

mv does copy the file to a separate partition.

# echo test >a1
# ln a1 b1
# ls -li ?1
291550 -rw-r--r-- 2 root root 5 Dec 14 11:57 a1
291550 -rw-r--r-- 2 root root 5 Dec 14 11:57 b1
# df
Filesystem     1K-blocks    Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda11      10325748 2111220   7690008  22% /home
/dev/sda2        9614148 1428428   7697344  16% /opt
# mv b1 /opt
# ls -li ?1 /opt/?1
    12 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 5 Dec 14 11:57 /opt/b1
291550 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 5 Dec 14 11:57 a1

In the case of a mv to a separate partition, the system does a cp and an rm and the hard link is severed.

[Marcel van den Boer]

I stand corrected. Somehow, mv did not behave like this on my machine. Strange.

Thanks.