--- Xavier <shiningxc@gmail.com> wrote:
So isn't it a bug in the package rather than in pacman? Shouldn't there be only relative symlinks?
I don't know if any package maintainers have reasons for prefering an absolute symlink over a relative one. Either way, I think there is something wrong with the following test case. Note that it actually only uses a relative symlink, and does not involve the --root option. Make and install the package in the following PKGBUILD. Just install it with "-U". ################## pkgname=symlinktest pkgver=0.1 pkgrel=1 arch=(i686 x86_64) build() { mkdir -p ${startdir}/pkg/tmp cd ${startdir}/pkg/tmp ln -s tmpfs/file symlink } ################## Then issue the following commands (as root): # mkdir /tmp/tmpfs # mount -t tmpfs -o size=1k tmpfs /tmp/tmpfs # touch /tmp/tmpfs/file # mount -o remount,ro /tmp/tmpfs # pacman -R symlinktest On my system, pacman (v 3.0.5-3) goes into that infinite loop, after giving the following output: error: cannot remove file '/tmp/symlink': Read-only file system error: failed to commit transaction (cannot remove all files for package) error: failed to release transaction (could not commit transaction) Why should /tmp/tmpfs being read-only affect removing that symlink? Doing # mount -o remount,rw /tmp/tmpfs # pacman -R symlinktest works as expected though, and /tmp/tmpfs/file remains intact, so I guess there is not really any danger here. So it seems pacman can't remove symlinks which point to files which live on read-only filesystems, which I guess is not such a serious issue, since most people don't run with read-only root partitions. Curious though. I guess I'll stop wasting your time now :) Jeremy Be smarter than spam. See how smart SpamGuard is at giving junk email the boot with the All-new Yahoo! Mail at http://mrd.mail.yahoo.com/try_beta?.intl=ca