[X-Unix] Buggy Fink, sym & hard links.

[Jamie Kahn Genet]

Hi there.

If I install Fink on a separate HD with the 'sw' folder symlinked to the
boot drive, Fink throughs a fit and refuses to compile certain parts of
fink updates and reports line end errors (actually it reports them about
the first, untouched setup regardless). So I cannot do the initial
update, nor hardly anything else.

But if I do install Fink to the boot disk Fink ignores the end of line
errors, downloads the updates and gets on with business. Fine, I can
live with that. But my boot drive is way too small (that nasty limit
imposed on certain old G3s), so I wonder if - after installing
everything via Fink that I want to for the moment - I can move the 'sw'
folder to another, more spacious drive and put a symlink on the boot
drive. Will that work? Will anything break?

I'm assuming if I go to install or update something else later I will
have to temporarily move the folder back. Any forceable problems doing
this?

Also - here's an idea, and I'm a bit new to Unix so bear with any
possible stupidity here - but what if I move the 'sw" folder and put a
_hard_ link to the boot drive? If I understand correctly the OS treats a
hard link as if it's there anyway. So would this fool the buggy software
into thinking the 'sw' folder is where it wants it, while allowing me to
have the space taken up on another drive?

What, if anything will work here, please? I simply can't live within the
restrictively small boot disk. Once I'm running a few programs it gets
filled up by VM.

TIA,
 Jamie Kahn Genet

P.S. I used NetInfoManager to move my Home folder to another drive - are
there any other large folders I can similary re-locate safely?
-- 
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.