130237 - MacOSX: Local soft links do not work

Status: VERIFIED WORKSFORME

(Core :: Networking: File, defect)

Description

[Gerald Teschl]

If have my home page locally on my hard disk. I have a subdirectory ftp
which is a (unix) soft link to another directory:

[gerald@madmushroom gerald]$ ls -l /home/gerald/public_html |grep ftp
lrwxr-xr-x   1 gerald  staff    21 Mar 10 20:53 ftp -> /home/ftp/pub/teschl/


If I specify this link in the URL:

file:///MacOS%20X/home/gerald/public_html/ftp/index.html

I will only get a blank page in the browser window. This worked fine in 0.9.7.

Comment 1

[timeless]

.

Comment 2

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

um, no.  this is networking

Comment 3

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

Reporter: Still a problem with 0.9.9 or later ?

Comment 4

[Gerald Teschl]

Yes, this is still present in 0.9.9.

Comment 5

[benc]

other operating systems?

Comment 6

[Gerald Teschl]

Works fine in the linux version.

Comment 7

[Greg K.]

Gerald, does it work using other browsers on the same machine?

Comment 8

[Gerald Teschl]

Yes. No problems with e.g., Internet Explorer 5.
It also works with older versions of mozilla (before 0.97 or so).
Still broken in RC1.

Comment 9

[benc]

WFM: Mac OS X, RC1

I think we need to make sure your file URL points to the linkfile on disk. Using
"File | Open File..." is the easiest way to do this.

MacOS X is confusing for two reasons:
MacOS applications see the file system differently than UNIX processes (like
Terminal.app's shell session)
Files that are not group=admin are not visible to the applications (for example
/etc is visible, but /private is not.)

STEPS:
[localhost:/tmp] benc% cat > file
this is a file
[localhost:/tmp] benc% ln -s file link
[localhost:/tmp] benc% ls -l link
lrwxrwxrwt  1 root  wheel  4 May  3 10:16 link -> file

In your environment, you probably have an even more complicated permissions setup.

Comment 10

[Gerald Teschl]

Yes you are right, it looks like this is probably a OS X problem and not a
mozilla problem. I made a mistake with IE. IE cannot find the file as well
and produces "File not found". Mozilla produces a blank page.

However, if I click on the link in the Finder it wors. If I choose it from the
Open File dialog it works as well, but it looks like the file dialog
translates the link to its real loacation and then passes the real location to
Mozilla.

If I use Mozilla as file browser, it will see the link and display the link as
a directory. But I try to enter the dirctory, I get a blank white page.

I tried to change the group to adin, but it makes no difference

[gerald@madmushroom gerald]$ whoami 
gerald
[gerald@madmushroom gerald]$ ls -l public_html/ |grep ftp
lrwxr-xr-x   1 gerald  staff    21 Apr 22 13:18 ftp -> /home/ftp/pub/teschl/
[gerald@madmushroom gerald]$ ls -ld /home/ftp/pub/teschl/
drwxr-sr-x  17 gerald  admin  534 Mar 18 10:53 /home/ftp/pub/teschl/

Comment 11

[benc]

Okay. I wasn't really completely looking at the problem you suggested.

Do both the following directories work?

file:///MacOS%20X/home/gerald/public_html/
file:///MacOS%20X/home/ftp/pub/teschl/

I created a couple links, and verified the problem you have.

I've also seen a variation among systems (PB G3, iBook and G4) about what top
level folders are displayed. One showed everything (even hidden files), one
showed all normal UNIX files, and one showed only "admin" group'd files.

Comment 12

[benc]

+nsbeta - Mac OS X needs to work well.

Comment 13

[Samir Gehani]

adt: nsbeta1-

Comment 14

[benc]

RESOLVED/WFM:
Mac OS X 10.2.6, Mozilla 1.4b.

I've tested a variety of combinations, and soft links seem to work fine.

However, I cannot display a directory that has a soft link that points to a
non-existent file (bug 207973)

Comment 15

[benc]

V/wfm.

Asa concurred from my comment.