Bug#317513: kaffe: ELOOP because of multiple alternatives when /usr is a symlink

[Yann Dirson]

Package: kaffe
Version: 2:1.1.5-3
Severity: important

The number of symlinks that need to be dereferenced to get to the
binary when /usr/bin/jar is the kaffe jar appears to be the exact
maximum allowed by the kernel.  Now my /usr is a symlink (something
that can be considered allowed, as special provisions on our
relative/absolute symlinks in packages were made just for this), and
wow:

$ /usr/bin/jar
bash: /usr/bin/jar: Too many levels of symbolic links

I stumbled upon [1] which explains why the limit is so low and is not
likely to be raised.

But is there any reason to have 2 alternatives involved in accessing
kaffe binaries ?  Maybe we should ammend the policy to disallow such
uses of the alternatives ?

[1] http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/9804.1/0250.html

-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'stable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i586)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.4.27-k6
Locale: LANG=3DC, LC_CTYPE=3Dfran=E7ais (charmap=3DISO-8859-1)

Versions of packages kaffe depends on:
ii  kaffe-jthreads                2:1.1.5-3  A green threads enabled vers=
ion of
ii  kaffe-pthreads                2:1.1.5-3  A POSIX threads enabled vers=
ion of

kaffe recommends no packages.

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