A symbolic link ("symlink") is a reference to a file or folder which may exist on the same or another drive in the system. Symbolic links allow users to create a more logical file layout, when the files themselves may be spread across multiple disks or relocated to more convenient locations.

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Is it inefficient to have symbolic links to symbolic links?

We're setting up a series of Makefiles where we want to have a project-level include directory that will have symbolic links to sub-project-level include files. Many sub-project developers have ...
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485 views

Are my Linux symbolic links acting correctly?

I've been using Linux on and off for the last 15 years and today I came across something in bash that surprised me. Setup the following directory structure: $ cd /tmp $ mkdir /tmp/symlinktest $ ...
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2k views

Symbolic links and 7zip

I'm trying to compress a folder into a .7z archive. This folder contains symbolic links to some other stuff outside the folder (both directories and files). Apparently 7zip just archives the link ...
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1answer
38 views

launching applications from the Windows command prompt?

Is there a Linux methodology to include .exe files symbolically to a location referenced by the %PATH%? The process seems trouble free on Linux, but when attempting to do similar actions via mklink on ...
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1answer
74 views

symlinks for admin users on Windows

On Windows you can create symlinks either if you start the programm, you want to create a symlink in (e.g. cmd), as Administrator. or if you give your user/usergroup the permission to create ...
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73 views

Give Access to a Subdirectory Without Giving Access to Parent Directories

I have a scenario involving a Windows file server where the "owner" wants to dole out permissions to a group of users of the following sort: \\server\dir1\dir2\dir3: Read & Execute and Write ...
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2answers
95 views

How to remove a duplicate symbolic link

I accidentally created a link to a folder in the same directory with the same name as the folder, and I'm not sure how to safely remove it without removing the actual folder. # ls -l total 4 ...
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1answer
269 views

Do I have to chmod after ln -s?

After I create a symlink with 'ln -s' (in Ubuntu 12.04, as root), it seems to be created with 777 permissions. Is that normal? Should I always do 'chmod 644' after doing 'ln -s'?
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309 views

How to copy relative symbolic links and keep targets

My situation has 2 directories: /blah/d01 and /blah/d02 $ls -l /blah/d01 a/ b/ c/ fa -> a fb -> b fc -> c and I want to copy fa, fb, fc to /blah/d02, and as a result: $ls -l /blah/d02 fa ...
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1answer
219 views

Generate a list of files by piping output of find command into another find command?

I need to generate a list of files for use in a shell script. The list should be all files (in a specified directory) that are hardlinked. I want to replace the hardlinks with symlinks. (Obviously, ...
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1answer
153 views

OS X: prevent Finder/File Chooser from following directory symlinks

I have a have a symlink foo in /Users/myaccount which points to /Volumes/foo. In the Finder or file chooser, the symlink does not show up as directory, so I can't expand it to select ...
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233 views

A sync method that creates symbolic links?

Does anybody know of an sync app that can produce symbolic links rather than copying the files? Or what would a (Windows) batch script look like that does this? If a script is the solution, I want to ...
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2answers
890 views

Can I move Windows 7 C:\Users more easily using 2 installs of Windows 7? [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate: Moving users folder on Windows Vista/Seven to another partition I am trying to move my Windows 7 C:\Users folder off of my 64GB SSD onto another drive (A partition on an ...
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1answer
556 views

Symbolic link modification for HP unix

I'm trying to modify the following in order to rename some symbolic links: find /home/user/public_html/qa/ -type l \ -lname '/home/user/public_html/dev/*' -printf \ 'ln -nsf $(readlink %p|sed ...
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1answer
1k views

Windows 7 on SSD using Symlinks

for my new desktop computer i want to buy a (smaller) SSD drive and put Windows 7 64bit on the SSD and only the most used stuff. And a second (bigger) normal HDD on which everything else goes. What is ...
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1answer
713 views

what is the difference between a symlink , junction , hard link and so on? [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate: What is the difference between NTFS hard links and directory junctions? well just got a litlle confused about all of them. so any explanation?
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1answer
82 views

Would it be okay to share Firefox's user.js between Linux and Windows?

Would it be okay to share Firefox's user.js between Linux and Windows (using a symbolic link in Linux)?
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1answer
23 views

Symlink bash autocomplete

If I typer unrar-nonfree and double tap tab, I get the usual autocomplete result: michaelxu@michaelxu-server:~$ unrar-free / backup.sh initrd.img.old mxx.lock tmp/ bin/ ...
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53 views

Checking where a symbolic link points at in Windows 7

In Windows 7, how can I check if a file is a symbolic link or not, if a folder is a junction or not, and how can I check where they are pointing at (in case they are symlink/junction). Both in ...
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1answer
408 views

Symbolic Links to an Existing Folder

I'm trying to synchronize two folders on two different computers to my Dropbox folder on their respective machines. So for example: XP: C:\Dev -> C:\Documents and Settings\username\Dropbox\Dev OSX: ...
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1answer
235 views

Symlink all files but copy certain extensions

I'm wondering how I'd be able to symlink all the files in a dir structure and then also copy files of a certain extension in that dir. I'm basically symlinking all files within /foo/a,b,c to ...
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2k views

Windows 7 NTFS Symbolic Link - Network Share Availability/Timeout

In Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008, is there a way to quickly detect if the target of a symbolic link is available? For example, a symbolic link is created to a remote share UNC using the ...
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1answer
159 views

symbolic link on folder created every day

I've this structure 2011-04-18T07.32.19UTC 2011-04-19T07.32.19UTC 2011-04-20T03.15.01UTC Every night, a new directory based on the current date is created. I would create a symbolic link on the ...
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964 views

Move files from EXT to NTFS preserving symbolic links

When I try to move lots of files from an EXT partition to an NTFS partition in Ubuntu, it complains about "Filesystem does not support symbolic links", and fails. Of course NTFS does support symbolic ...
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1answer
440 views

Accessing files obscured by filesystem mounted at non-empty directory

I wish to mount a volume/filesystem at a non-empty directory, yet still retain access to the directory's contents. Is this possible? I know that a filesystem can be mounted at a non-empty directory ...
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1answer
372 views

The fastest way for relinking a directory

I use a Gentoo Linux, and I'm currently moving my /usr/portage (portage's database, containing thousands of small ebuild files), /var/tmp/portage (portage's compiling directory), and /var/tmp/ccache ...
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Ubuntu - Create a link to a specified directory so I can easily change to that directory

Is it possible to create a symlink to a directory, like /var/lib/tomcat6/webapps/MyWar that I can access from everywhere? I want to be able to say cd myapp from anywhere in the directory tree and go ...
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2answers
435 views

Windows hard link taking up space?

On my computer I create a hard link mklink /h git-link.exe git.exe Hardlink created for git-link.exe <<===>> git.exe Now they both take up space 2012-04-17 12:14 AM 6,905,039 ...
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89 views

cp -H vs cp -L (What is a “command-line” symbolic link?)

My OS states the following in the man page of cp: -H follow command-line symbolic links -L, --dereference always follow symbolic links I am having difficulty figuring out what ...
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103 views

Is there something like hardlinks that split into separate files on modifications?

Let's say files orig and copy are huge but identical files. In order to save storage space one could therefore either make copy a soft-link to orig or hard-link both files to the same data. orig must ...
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1answer
442 views

How to find source of a symbolic link?

Say fileA is a sym link to fileB. I have only fileB at hand and want to find all files that are sym links to fileB. Is there a command to show this in *nix?
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1answer
1k views

How to fix a symbolic link pointing to a wrong location?

I'm a little bit confused with hard/softlinks here. I'm on OSX, have a folder '4' and two links pointing to it: drwxr-xr-x 4 imm staff 136 14 Jun 21:24 4 lrwxr-xr-x 1 imm staff 1 14 Jun 16:56 ...
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Is it possible to create a subfolder inside a symlink folder but not be added into the parent folder?

Is a very tricky question, sorry about that Base on this Folder A file1 file2 Folder B ( symlink of Folder A (softlink) ) file1 file2 that i want to do is create a folder or file inside my ...
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38 views

Is it safe to replace a folder with a partition mounted to that folder n Windows 7?

I know most programs won't notice the difference, but is it true for e.g. virtualization software like VMware? I'll give you an example: Let's say my virtual machines are in C:\_VM\ My C: space ...
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1answer
310 views

In OS X how could I create symlinks to everything within a given directory (rather than the directory itself)?

Say I have a bunch of config files that I'd like to store elsewhere, but if I move them and then symlink the directory, the application sees it as a symlink and won't use the contained files. Instead ...
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392 views

Move to the directory of a symbolic link

On a UNIX machine I in my current directory I create a symbolic link: > ln -s public_html/code/index.html Which creates a file locally named index.html. How can cd to the directory ...
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3answers
341 views

How do I get Windows XP to change where My Videos, My Music and My Pictures folders are pointing to, to make them act like Linux symlinks?

I love how in Linux you can link to folders. Is there some way to get the same functionality in Windows XP, maybe by editing the Registry.
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89 views

Symbolic links in root

We have a (small) lan of linux boxes running cross mounted directories where in each host has the others mounted as hostname:/ on /hostname. So for completeness, each machine could also have itself ...
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1answer
2k views

Soft link to external drive not visible in apache directory listing

I am on Ubuntu 8.10, and generally share my content with ppl on LAN by creating soft links in Apache2 document root to the intended directory. So if I want to share my Videos directory I will CD ...
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2answers
156 views

remote symbolic link / junction

Might be a pretty obvious one but have had some trouble finding solid answers. I have a directory on a windows network share containing different versions of an application. I would like to have a ...
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2answers
82 views

Is there a method to find how many soft links point to certain file?

SSH is a soft link (symbolic link or symlink) to dropbear. I want to know how many files are soft linked to dropbear. Is there any method to find how many soft links point to certain file? It would ...
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1answer
95 views

bash :: visually distinguishing hard links on ls

I am using bash shell in Ubuntu precise. I am partial to symbolic links in bash even when a hard link would make more sense because they can be more easily identified with an ls. In contrast, for ...
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1answer
47 views

Symbolic links when formatted

I have a symbolic link in C drive to a location on D drive. If I delete the C drive partition or format C drive, will it delete/destroy the files on D drive? I run windows 7
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2answers
187 views

symbolic link to desktop in windows

I'm looking to make a symbolic link to my Desktop in windows. The reason I want this is that I've been doing a lot of web development on my local machine and I'm looking for a shortcut that I can type ...
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1answer
114 views

Possible to “move Windows XP” to data partition using following plan and symbolic links?

Background: I have Windows XP and Windows 7 on the same machine, on different partitions. Thus, I can perform operations on either OS while said OS is not running. Terminology: "XP:", "7:" and ...
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3answers
9k views

How can I create a directory symbolic link on Windows Server 2003?

I'm trying to create a directory symbolic link under Windows Server 2003 but I'm not having any luck. I've tried junction.exe (Sysinternals), ln.exe, and linkd.exe (Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit). ...
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622 views

How get full path to target of link

If I have a symbolic link /var/opt/foo created with ln -fs /path/to/target/dir foo. How can I in a script that sees only the link get /path/to/target/dir? What I want to achieve in the script is rm ...
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2answers
205 views

cp into destination hierarchy with symbolic link?

I am trying to write a site deploy script that will copy files like so: SOURCE . .. src/ html/ DEST . .. src/ html/ -> /var/www/ftproot/mysite I want the files in SOURCE html to go to DEST ...
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1answer
138 views

Symlinking some of my drive to another, AND syncing structures (Link Shell Extension?)

I'm going to install a SSD and a hard drive on my computer soon. It's a 128 GB SSD, and a 1 TB hard drive. I'm going to use the SSD as follows: It will store the OS and most applications. As for the ...
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3answers
53 views

Direction of a symlink

touch a ln -s a b The above command creates a symbolic link which originates from "b" and points to "a": lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 1 Dec 20 23:41 b -> a The question is that how to say that ...

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