editing files remotely

[Michael Powe <michael+gnus@trollope.org>]

hello,

i'm trying to understand how emacs handles links when editing files
remotely.  i have some web sites where i typically edit remotely with
emacs.  many times i just log into the shell directory and then dired
into the www directory.  this directory is typically a link from the
shell home directory to the actual www dir, which may be like this:

lrwxrwxrwx  1 tr0921ea tr0921ea  16 May 10 17:41 cgi -> /var/www/cgi-bin

now, if i'm on this machine (slackware 9.0), trying to follow that
link does not work, emacs treats it like a file.  if i go upstairs to
my winders machine and do the same thing with ntemacs, it will follow
the link to the cgi-bin directory.  ???

however, that's not the end of the story.  from this machine, i can
follow this link:

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  21 Sep 22  2002 mainwebsite_cgi -> \
../../var/www/cgi-bin

both machines are on the same network & going out the same dsl
connection. 

but wait, there's more.

sometimes, when i edit a file from this machine (but never from the
other one), i can't save it.  emacs gives a message in the minibuffer
about a keyboard macro -- something like, "bell rung at end of
keyboard macro" -- and the file is not saved.  i can write to the
directory; iow, if i save the file to a different name, that will
work. but it won't overwrite.

any suggestions would be appreciated.  thanks.

mp

-- 
Michael Powe				    Naugatuck CT USA
------------------------------------------------------------
"Perl is obviously my attempt to help other people be creative. 
In my little way, I'm sneakily helping people understand a bit 
more about the sort of people God likes." -- Larry Wall