Design question: why so many symbolic links?

Forum: HyperNews Installation
Date: 1999, Feb 10
From: Douglas Yatcilla

I have experimented installing and using HyperNews for the past few versions; I think it's a great product, but the most confusing part of installing it for me was keeping straight all the symbolic links in it.
Recently, I tried installing HyperNews 1.9.9 on an HP9000 system running Apache 1.3.4. I wanted to use Apache's suEXEC feature (it changes the effective user ID of the CGI program to reduce security risks.) But, I discovered that this was apparently not possible because suEXEC security model will not allow target programs that are symbolic links to be run (e.g. http://www.../HyperNews/SECURED/edit-article.pl)
This made me wonder just why symbolic links are used so much in HyperNews. Why not use hard links for files like edit-article.pl above? This would be slightly more efficient (in speed and disk space) than using symbolic links. Or, why not refer to the program directly instead of using any sort of link?
I have not invested much time in studing the HyperNews source, so forgive me if my question is naive. But, I would be very interested in knowing the rationale (if any) behind the use of symbolic links in HyperNews. Thanks.

Next-in-Thread

Next Message

Inline:

1

All

Outline:

1

2

All