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

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…