Sticky bit on symlinks (lchmod)

[Victor Ciurus]

Hi everyone!

I am running a A class HP-UX v11.00 sever and I have accidentally deleted the symlink that pointed from /usr/bin to /bin. I managed to put the symlink back yet I'm not able to get back the sticky bit on the symlink as it was before (it was lr-xr-xr-t).
Obviously any change to the symlink causes the /usr/bin directory to get its permissions changed.
Iread smth about "...a symbolic link that has its sticky bit set is
called a transition link (i.e. links to ease the transition to the new
SVR4 filesystem layout)..." and that "In order to set the sticky bit on a symlink, one must use the undocumented
lchmod system call (i.e. lchmod("/bin", 041777))."

Yet I don't seem to get it right. How do I get that sticky bit back on the symlink without chaging permissions on the target directory?

Thnx a lot,
Vic

[John Palmer]

The sticky bit doesn't prevent the link from working. Provided the link is there then your'e OK. I believe that it's only used by the tlremove command to identify links that should be removed.

As S.K. says, tlinstall will create it properly.

Regards,
John

[S.K. Chan]

It's not documented clearly but you can run ..
# /opt/upgrade/bin/tlinstall
to recreate the transition links. Since I've never run it, I actually tested on my 11.0.
# cd /
# rm bin
==> Removing the "sticky bit" link to /usr/bin
# /opt/upgrade/bin/tlinstall
# ll bin
==> The "sticky bit" sym link is restored.

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi:

You can easily rectify this. These are "transition" links which appeared when the filesystem layout changed at 10.0. To re-establish lost ones, do:

# /opt/upgrade/bin/tlinstall -l -v

You should also find man pages:

# /opt/upgrade/share/man/man1m.Z/tlinstall.1
m

Regards!

...JRF...

[Victor Ciurus]

Thank you everyone!
I've fixed it by running '/opt/upgrade/bin/tlinstall'. I should have got the guts to do it earlier but I haven'T (--> sticky bit) :D