Home / server / Questions / 808436
In Process
Willem
Asked: 2016-10-12 09:40:46 +0800 CST

Ext4: how to prevent hard links?

  • 772

Our backup system duplicity does not support Linux hard links. To prevent data loss, I want to enforce that no hard links exist on our systems. AFAIK, there is no ext4 mount option to disable hard link functionality.

I could remove the ln utility but this would not disable the underlying system call (and besides, I want to keep symlinks).

Anyone got a good idea how to solve this? Recompile the kernel with EXT4_LINK_MAX set to 1?

linux ext4

1 Answers

  1. The first solution that comes to mind for me is creating aliases for all users so that ln = ln -s.

    You can do this by creating a script in /etc/profile.d: 

    sudo vim /etc/profile.d/aliases.sh

    Then insert your alias: 

    alias ln='ln -s'

    Close and reopen your terminals or execute exec bash (assumes you're using bash)

    This should prevent anyone from executing hardlinks instead of symbolic.

    • 0