The .@sys question again

[Magnus Ahltorp]

> Mathematica creates configuration directories ~/.Mathematica.sysname and
> accesses it through the symlink ~/.Mathematica. at sys . Mathematica gives a
> fatal startup error if it can't read its home directory. I don't get the
> startup error under Transarc AFS, but I do under Arla; and I can verify the
> cause by noting that "cd ~/.Mathematica" or "cd ~/.Mathematica. at sys" fails.
> I can get a normal startup, though, by making a symlink from ~/.Mathematica
> to ~/.Mathematica.sysname .

Could you provide an exact command sequence that makes the error
happen, with proper error messages?

For me, this works:

p01:~$ cd foo
p01:~/foo$ mkdir bar.i386_linux6
p01:~/foo$ fs sysname
Current sysname is 'i386_linux6'
p01:~/foo$ ln -s bar. at sys bar
p01:~/foo$ touch bar.i386_linux6/testfile
p01:~/foo$ ls -l bar
lrwxrwxrwx   1 d95-mah  nogroup         8 Mar  1 21:18 bar -> bar. at sys
p01:~/foo$ ls -l bar/
total 0
-rw-r--r--   1 d95-mah  nogroup         0 Mar  1 21:18 testfile