Comments on: Understanding UNIX / Linux symbolic (soft) and hard links

By: mahesh

mahesh — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 05:10:50 +0000

how the soft links and hard links will be helpful?

By: tordeu

tordeu — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 15:27:13 +0000

@Srinivas Kotaru:

Hard links to directories and not supported, because you would be able to create “loops”.
Imagine you would go into a folder “a” and create a hard link “b” that would link to the folder “a”. This would create and endless loop. Imagine you would tar the directory a now.
Tar would go into directory a and find a directory b in it. Then it will try to go into b, but because it is a hard link to a, it will be in folder a again. There, it would again see the folder “b” and when it does into this folder, because of the hard link, end up in a again. And this would never stop, because you created a circle.
In this example it’s easy to figure out. But the situation might be more complex. A folder a might include – somewhere deep inside – a link to a different folder b and inside b there might be a link to a folder c and somewhere within c there would be a link to folder a. Now you have a circle again.
It’s not that it’s not possible to prevent programs from hanging etc., but they hard links to directories are a problem and it was decided to not allow them to make things easier.
Though, Apple uses them in Mac OS X for Time Machine, but does not allow the user to create them.

By: Srinivas Kotaru

Srinivas Kotaru — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 18:49:29 +0000

I knew that hard links cannot be linked to folders,However unable to find reason behind this? I did lot of googling but still unable to get correct answer Can somebody give me reason for this in simple english?

Srinivas

By: mallick

mallick — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 10:07:27 +0000

when i right click on a file then how the os gets it’s properties file. i.e in os where those files are stored

By: Aman Bedi

Aman Bedi — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 16:42:46 +0000

@ Anjali

please let us know the output and how are you trying to access the softlink?

if you open nautilus and try to type the path of the soft link, it will appear as a short-cut (like in windows).

Try to browse it in X windows.

By: Anjali

Anjali — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 13:06:19 +0000

I have created the softlink…….but not working

By: ramesh

ramesh — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 08:28:44 +0000

thank u vivek very good infomation
and nice explain.

By: Morph

Morph — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 05:40:34 +0000

Ya the links cannot be used for directories and also you should not change the default file permissions of symbolic links file by using chmod command lest they will grant the user all the rights to the file. The sys admins therefore disable access to the /etc directory because if you had access to the directory a simple symbolic link to /etc/passwd could get you all the access you want to the system. see this link

By: hw

hw — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 21:13:22 +0000

soft links are often used to link to directories, e.g.
cdrom -> /media/cdrom/
floppy -> /media/floppy/

By: lv

lv — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 03:48:31 +0000

@Robertson
That is not really correct. Hard links cannot link directories however soft links can

By: ROBERTSON

ROBERTSON — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 06:35:25 +0000

Hardlink or softlink is only for files and not for folders.
/etc is a folder name. Choose any file name under it
like
$ln /etc/test.log /tmp/test_file

By: Vivek Gite

Vivek Gite — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 14:37:52 +0000

@ kaos,

Yes. Here is output from my desktop:

ln /etc /tmp/test
ln: `xy': hard link not allowed for directory

By: kaos

kaos — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 14:34:33 +0000

Hard links cannot “links” directories?

By: Balakumar

Balakumar — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 07:01:37 +0000

Thank u Vivek Gite Sir,
for posting very nice article about linux filesystem…