Tech-Recipes - Latest Comments in Create a Symbolic Link in UNIX

Re: Create a Symbolic Link in UNIX

NN — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 12:16:58 -0000

Thanks Jim for a very good explanation!

Re: Create a Symbolic Link in UNIX

Jim — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 10:35:34 -0000

Oh...sorry...one last thing...a file is not actually deleted unless its hard link count is 1. *THEN* it is gone.

Re: Create a Symbolic Link in UNIX

Jim — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 10:33:55 -0000

Vick: Sorry, but that isn't correct. If you have a file called 'new', for instance, and create a hard link called 'new2', both 'new' and 'new2' point to the same physical location on the hard drive. If you do an 'ls -l new' you will see something like:

-rw-r--r-- 2 <user> <group> <size> <date> new

That *2* is the number of hard links to the file. Every file upon creation has one hard link to the location itself, which is why you normally see '1' in this spot for files.

Now, to get back to what I was explaining, if you have 'new' and 'new2' which is a hard link to 'new', and you delete 'new', the file is not gone. 'new2' still points to that file and is completely usable. Other hard links are not 'magically' deleted...and that is the value in a hard link.

If 'new2' was a soft link, however, to 'new', and you deleted 'new', then 'new2' would still exist, but would not be valid any longer, since the file 'new' that it points to no longer exists.

Hope this helps.

Re: Create a Symbolic Link in UNIX

Amster — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 06:05:15 -0000

A hard link is another name for an existing file; there is no difference between the link and the original file. So if you make a hard link from file `foo' to file `bar', and then remove file `bar', file `foo' is also removed. Each file has at least one hard link, which is the original file name itself. Directories always have at least two hard links--the directory name itself (which appears in its parent directory) and the special file `.' inside the directory. Likewise, when you make a new subdirectory, the parent directory gains a new hard link for the special file `..' inside the new subdirectory.

Re: Create a Symbolic Link in UNIX

Pranab — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 10:15:14 -0000

What is the Difference between symlink and hard link

Re: Create a Symbolic Link in UNIX

Thomas — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 12:53:17 -0000

> ln -s /export/space/common/archive /archive
Just what i was looking for. Thanks!

Re: Create a Symbolic Link in UNIX

Tom — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 17:20:58 -0000

Maybe you could provide the command syntax to make it a hard link:

ln ../init.d/httpd S77httpd

Re: Create a Symbolic Link in UNIX

Nathan Stiles — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 14:15:22 -0000

cd /etc/rc2.d
ln -s ../init.d/httpd S77httpd

All rc links should be hardlinks. This is not a good example.