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I am taking over control of a server and I have found a directory in two different locations:

/var/www
/home/user.name (i.e., ~/)

that have the exact same inode number:

ls -i
11895253 directory.name

I had thought that hard links on directories were entirely impossible. What is this then? How does a folder exist in two places at once with the exact same contents?

4
  • 1
    Post here output of mount.
    – Eddy_Em
    Apr 30, 2013 at 6:57
  • They are probably under different mount points, so they are not hard links, although they may end up referencing the same directory.
    – mark4o
    Apr 30, 2013 at 7:00
  • @Eddy_Em mount gave me: /var/www/directory.name on /home/user.name/directory.name type none (rw,bind) Apr 30, 2013 at 7:02
  • 1
    And that's an answer to your question!
    – Eddy_Em
    Apr 30, 2013 at 7:16

1 Answer 1

5

It's a "bind mount". From the mount man page:

The bind mounts. Since Linux 2.4.0 it is possible to remount part of the file hierarchy somewhere else. The call is

 mount --bind olddir newdir

See also http://backdrift.org/how-to-use-bind-mounts-in-linux and http://backdrift.org/how-to-use-bind-mounts-in-linux.

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