Quoting Darrin Chandler : > On Fri, Nov 09, 2007 at 11:38:17AM -0800, keith smith wrote: >> >> Hi everyone, >> >> I'm needing to share some files between two hosting accounts and am >> looking at creating a few symbolic links. >> >> In reading the man page for ln it says it creates a hard link by >> default or I can use --symbolic to create a symbolic link. >> >> What is the difference between a hard link and a symbolic link and >> why would I want to use one over the other? >> >> Thanks a bunch in advance for your help. - Read up on inodes and filesystems. Knowing the difference between a file and an inode will help the hard/soft link distinction make more sense. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inode http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem - When you 'ls -l' a file, the first column after the permissions mask is the number of hard links to the file. alexd@pni-bt12814:~/metagmetric/tests/tmp/deltas$ ls -l total 64 -rw-r--r-- 1 alexd alexd 2 2007-11-09 08:59 file1 -rw-r--r-- 1 alexd alexd 8 2007-11-09 08:59 file2 Each of those are normal files, 1 link to each. If I 'ln file2 file2-link', then you see : alexd@pni-bt12814:~/metagmetric/tests/tmp/deltas$ ls -l file* -rw-r--r-- 1 alexd alexd 0 2007-11-09 13:13 file1 -rw-r--r-- 2 alexd alexd 0 2007-11-09 13:13 file2 -rw-r--r-- 2 alexd alexd 0 2007-11-09 13:13 file2-link If I modify either file2 or file2-link, the operation is exactly the same. I can remove file2 without affecting file2-link. Looking at inodes and inode counts is the only way to distinguish a hard link from a normal file. - Symbolic links can't be resolved outside of a chroot. Hard links can. --------------------------------------------------- PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss