[1.7] Cygwin 1.7 misnames hardlinks

[Lawrence Mayer]

>> On Wed, 7 Jan 2009, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
>>
>>> The same happens with all hardlinks to files used by the system.  The NT
>>> status code returned when trying to set the delete disposition flag is
>>> C0000121, STATUS_CANNOT_DELETE.  None of the Windows native methods to
>>> delete these hardlinks works.  I'm still puzzeled how to get rid of
>>> them. Does anybody knows how to do that?

> On Jan  7 09:38, Brian Ford wrote:
>> Just a WAG, but disable Windows File Protection?
>>
>> http://support.microsoft.com/kb/222193

On 090107 08:09, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
> No, I found the solution by getting the double-plus surprising result
> that removing these hardlinks works in Cygwin 1.5.  For some reason only
> the OS hackers at Microsoft might grok, setting the delete dispostion
> flag for a file (*) doesn't work, but opening the file with the
> FILE_FLAG_DELETE_ON_CLOSE flag and then closing it again (**) works
> fine.  Go figure!  Unfortunately the DELETE_ON_CLOSE stuff is too
> dangerous in some circumstances so it's not a generic solution.
>
> I'm preparing a fix for 1.7.
>
>
> Corinna
>
> (*)  Which is also what the Win32 function DeleteFile does.
> (**) Which is what Cygwin 1.5 and the native function ZwDeleteFile does.

Thanks for fixing the original hardlink minsnaming problem Corinna.

A Windows native way to remove in-use hardlinks is to overwrite them 
with DOS Move, e.g.

C:\>ln Windows\fonts\vgaoem.fon .
C:\>del vgaoem.fon
C:\vgaoem.fon
Access is denied.

C:\>echo dummy file> foo
C:\>move /y foo vgaoem.fon >nul
C:\>del vgaoem.fon

A restriction is that the two files foo and vgaoem.fon must reside on 
the same filesystem (Volume).

New Year Greetings,
Lawrence





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