Create Hard And Soft Links
General Information
Creating “short cuts” to files/directories.
Types of Links
Soft link
- Link to a specific file location (can cross file systems)
- Also known as symbolic link or symlink.
- Like a simple shortcut; deleting a symlink does not remove original file.
- Deleting original file breaks the symlink and data is gone.
Hard link
- Link to specific inode (cannot cross filesystems)
- Data not gone until all hard links have been deleted
Symlinks
Example listing of a symbolic link
ls -l /etc/systemd/system/ lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 37 Oct 17 2014 default.target -> /lib/systemd/system/multi-user.target
Create symlink
ln -s /etc/motd motd-local
- Creates a symlink to “/etc/motd” in the current directory, called “motd-local”
Hard Links
Create hardlink
touch file1 ln file1 file2
List the files
ll -rw-------. 1 root root 9227 Oct 17 2014 anaconda-ks.cfg -rw-r--r--. 2 root root 0 Jun 20 15:11 file1 -rw-r--r--. 2 root root 0 Jun 20 15:11 file2
- Notice the column with “2”, meaning 2 links to the inode)
List with inode (-i) information
ls -li 8419076 -rw-------. 1 root root 9227 Oct 17 2014 anaconda-ks.cfg 8442605 -rw-r--r--. 2 root root 0 Jun 20 15:11 file1 8442605 -rw-r--r--. 2 root root 0 Jun 20 15:11 file2
- Notice the first column shows the same inode for file1 and file2.