tests/du/slink.sh: what's the rationale?

[Bernhard Voelker]

Does anyone remember the reason for adding this test?

tests/du/slink.sh:2:
  # Ensure that the size of a long-named-symlink is > 0.

I'm asking because I'm experiencing failures on OpenSUSE's Build Service.
It uses XEN for building packages ...

  booting XEN kernel ...
  xm create -c /var/tmp/build.xen.conf-xEZDA7Af3 name=build_8 \
     disk=phy:/dev/dm-14,hda1,w disk=phy:/dev/dm-15,hda2,w \
     extra=quiet init=/.build/build elevator=noop panic=1 console=ttyS0

and the file system is an ordinary ext4:

  + df -Th .
  Filesystem     Type  Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
  /dev/hda1      ext4   14G  1.2G   13G   9% /

  + stat .
  File: '.'
  Size: 4096            Blocks: 8          IO Block: 4096   directory
  Device: 301h/769d     Inode: 141009      Links: 2
  Access: (0700/drwx------)  Uid: (  399/  abuild)   Gid: (  399/  abuild)
  Access: 2013-01-19 13:26:39.280020256 +0000
  Modify: 2013-01-19 13:26:39.420020256 +0000
  Change: 2013-01-19 13:26:39.420020256 +0000
  Birth: -

  + stat -f .
  File: "."
  ID: c0e637f6ae90cc28 Namelen: 255     Type: ext2/ext3
  Block size: 4096       Fundamental block size: 4096
  Blocks: Total: 3571656    Free: 3274091    Available: 3274091
  Inodes: Total: 897600     Free: 855410

However, du reports them all with 0 size:

  + grep '^[1-9]' out
  + fail=1
  + cat out
  0     1
  0     15
  0     16
  0     31
  0     32
  0     59
  0     60
  0     63
  0     64
  0     127
  0     128
  0     255
  0     256
  0     511
  0     512
  0     1024

Here's an strace output for the last symlink "1024":

  newfstatat(AT_FDCWD, "1024", {st_dev=makedev(3, 1), st_ino=141025,
    st_mode=S_IFLNK|0777, st_nlink=1, st_uid=399, st_gid=399,
    st_blksize=4096, st_blocks=0, st_size=1024,
    st_atime=2013/01/19-13:26:39, st_mtime=2013/01/19-13:26:39,
    st_ctime=2013/01/19-13:26:39}, AT_SYMLINK_NOFOLLOW) = 0


The test du/slink has been added back in 2002
  http://git.sv.gnu.org/cgit/coreutils.git/commit/?id=92a2cc65
but I didn't find a reason for it - neither in the surrounding
commits nor in today's du.c or du.c of that time.

Is tests/du/slink.sh obsolete nowadays?

Have a nice day,
Berny