Restoring from backup, preserving uids

[lewis butler]

On 2-Aug-2008, at 13:15, Matt McCutchen wrote:
> On Sat, 2008-08-02 at 20:42 +0200, Paul Slootman wrote:
>> Just a note: I'd recommend also using -H to preserve hard links.
>> Traditionally a unix / linux system will have many files hard-linked
>> (although a quick check shows less than I expected).
>
> Do you know of any case in which breaking hard links makes a system  
> work
> incorrectly (as opposed to just taking up more space)?

I think it can.  For example, on many systems, vi is a hard link to  
either nvi or vim.  If you break the link, and then update, bad things  
can happen as vi will invoke an old version of vim or nvi which might  
possibly not work at all with the current libraries.

Another problem would likely be with bash and sh, since sh is often a  
hard link to bash (at least on OS X it is).  Having sh be a different  
version is probably not a Good Thing.