Interesting Tip: Know how to create an infinite link in Linux ?
In this post, we will look something really interesting.
Do you know how to create an infinite link in linux ?
We can create an infinite loop and our path will increase like below.
I. Going deep infinite.
[user@ngelinux001 SLES15_x86_64]$ pwd /grid/common/pkgs/pstack/latest/SLES15_x86_64/SLES15_x86_64 [user@ngelinux001 SLES15_x86_64]$ cd SLES15_x86_64 [user@ngelinux001 SLES15_x86_64]$ pwd /grid/common/pkgs/pstack/latest/SLES15_x86_64/SLES15_x86_64/SLES15_x86_64 [user@ngelinux001 SLES15_x86_64]$ cd SLES15_x86_64 [user@ngelinux001 SLES15_x86_64]$ pwd /grid/common/pkgs/pstack/latest/SLES15_x86_64/SLES15_x86_64/SLES15_x86_64/SLES15_x86_64 [user@ngelinux001 SLES15_x86_64]$ cd SLES15_x86_64 [user@ngelinux001 SLES15_x86_64]$ pwd /grid/common/pkgs/pstack/latest/SLES15_x86_64/SLES15_x86_64/SLES15_x86_64/SLES15_x86_64/SLES15_x86_64 [user@ngelinux001 SLES15_x86_64]$
II. Why this is happening ?
[user@ngelinux001 SLES15_x86_64]$ pwd /grid/common/pkgs/pstack/latest/SLES15_x86_64/ [user@ngelinux001 SLES15_x86_64]$ ls -ltr total 8 drwxr-sr-x 3 matrix ngegrp 4096 Apr 1 2009 man drwxr-sr-x 2 matrix ngegrp 4096 Apr 1 2009 bin lrwxrwxrwx 1 matrix ngegrp 53 Sep 8 2021 SLES15_x86_64 -> /grid/common/pkgsData/pstack-v1.1/Linux/SLES15_x86_64 [user@ngelinux001 SLES15_x86_64]$
III. Impact
Such links can have major impact on your production system.
Suppose a backup job is running that traverse all paths and take rsync of files.
The job will goto infinite loop here and will keep running for years until killed.