A special type of file that references a file or directory.

learn more… | top users | synonyms (1)

25
votes
7answers
4k views

What is the difference between symbolic and hard links?

When would you use one over the other?
20
votes
3answers
3k views

How can I “relink” a lot of broken symlinks?

I have a directory tree which has a bunch of symbolic links to files under /home... however, I have moved /home to /mnt/home and need a way to "relink" all of the symlinks. Does such functionality ...
9
votes
2answers
601 views

pwd without symlinks

If I do pwd I notice it uses whatever symlinks I used to get into the current directory. Can I get it to tell me the "real" directory I'm in ... i.e. the path from the root to my current directory ...
29
votes
2answers
7k views

Why hard links not allowed to directories in UNIX/Linux

I read in text books that UNIX/Linux doesn't allows hard links to directories but soft links do. Is it because, when we have cycles and if we create hardlinks, and after some time we delete the ...
11
votes
4answers
3k views

Converting relative path to absolute path

Is there a *nix command to get absolute(and canonicalized) path from relative path(with current path) or symbolic link?
9
votes
4answers
2k views

symbolic link to a directory and relative path

I've created symlink with absolute path to the directory (Blink) and have for example following tree: $ ls -l /tmp/A total 0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 6 Apr 3 12:27 Blink -> /tmp/B -rw-r--r-- 1 root ...
6
votes
1answer
246 views

Is there a way to make perl -i not clobber symlinks?

A friend of mine points out that if you do: perl -pi.bak -e 's/foo/bar/' somefile when "somefile" is actually a symlink, perl does just what the docs say it will do: It does this by renaming ...
4
votes
1answer
201 views

Symbolic links with ls, mv: forcing the functions to utilize “logical” addresses (remembering the original path)

It seems that for many basic functions operating on symbolic links, the physical path is used by default. However, cd works fine. When moving into a symbolic link, cd remembers where I came from so it ...
1
vote
1answer
728 views

Get path of current script when executed through a symlink

I have a utility consisting of a couple directories with some bash scripts and supporting files that will be deployed to several machines possibly in a different directory on each machine. The ...
7
votes
4answers
302 views

Linking /proc/mnt to /proc/mounts

I understand that /proc filesystem reflects the output of various processes. Unfortunately, I have a propietary (romdump) binary that expects the mount table to appear as /proc/mtd, while my Android ...
6
votes
5answers
675 views

Dynamic Symlinks

I have built my app for different architectures and would like to create a "dynamic symlink" which takes me to the right version based on a variable. If the machine I am currently logged in to, is ...
4
votes
4answers
370 views

Symbolic link and hard link questions

Let's say /A/B/c.sh is symbolic linked to /X/Y/c.sh. If c.sh has the command "./SOMETHING", '.' means /A/B/ or /X/Y/? How about the hard link?
3
votes
3answers
367 views

Linux find and remove all symlinks relating to a directory

So, I have a bit of a situation where I created many symlinks in an attempt to get them to work, trying all sorts of combinations .. now I have this error: ls: cannot access /etc/sv/me: Too many ...
2
votes
2answers
537 views

Recursive scp without following links or creating a giant tar file?

So I did a recursive scp on my remote fileserver (in another state) and it created an infinite loop of links on my remote web directory... ...
2
votes
1answer
443 views

Make cd follow symbolic links

I have my code mounted as an sshfs in my home directory, but the hierarchy is difficult to remember, so I created a symlink in my home directory leading to that directory. Is there a way so that when ...
2
votes
2answers
559 views

How does /dev/fd relate to /proc/self/fd/?

$ ls -l /dev/stdin /dev/fd/0 lrwx------ 1 tim tim 64 2011-08-07 09:53 /dev/fd/0 -> /dev/pts/2 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 2011-08-06 08:14 /dev/stdin -> /proc/self/fd/0 $ ls -l /dev/pts/2 ...
2
votes
1answer
1k views

Why can't list file/directory relative to .. from a symbolic link directory (No such file or directory)?

I have a /usr/tomcat6/logs directory linked to /var/log/tomcat6. When I changed directory to /usr/tomcat6/logs and try to ls files using a relative pathname ../conf/Catalina/localhost, a No such file ...