Linux Crash Course - Symbolic Links

[@larrywilliams8010]

I've been a Linux user full time since 2004, dabbled in Linux (and Unix) since the early 90s, and only now do I haver a clearer understanding of inodes and links. Thank you.

[@k.chriscaldwell4141]

Thank you. An easier way to use the full path when creating a link: Create a soft symbolic link to a file using long path: ln -s $(readlink -f FILE) $(readlink -f ~/Dir01/Dir02/Dir03) This will retrieve and use the full path to the original file and target directory.

[@spruce-bogey]

Hard links can indeed be copied or moved to other media just like any other file (18:06). But a hard link cannot _reference_ a file outside of the file system that it's on. Every file is a hard link. When a file is created, there is one hard link to that file. Additional hard links can be created, basically giving additional names to the same file. The second field returned by the *ls -l* command (after the permission string) gives the number of hard links to a file. The file content is not removed until the last hard link to a file is removed.

[@Sveto8]

that is true

[@oscargm1979]

I don't think it is the number of hard links,is the ID of the Inode,just an ID(do a ls --help: -i, --inode print the index number of each file) .

[@strifef7]

I love the piece by piece explanations Jay!!! Keep up the great Linux content!

[@MrLopez-kz8zl]

Thanks Jay, now I understand clearly the relationship between nodes and soft links and hard links even I seldom used it.

[@JV-pu8kx]

The number to the right of the permissions can give a clue that there is a hard link as it shows how many times the i-node is referenced. You can see this with directories. Where that directory is listed is a link. That directory's own "." (current directory) entry is a link. The ".." (parent directory) entry for any subdirectories are links.

[@rv6amark]

Very helpful video, thank you! As a long time Microsoft user (since MS-Dos 1.1 and Win 3.0) I have always wondered if there was a "shortcut" capability in Linux. Now that Microsoft has forced me away from Windows (for too many reasons to list here), I am learning Linux and slowly transitioning my home systems to it as well. It appears you have answered my quest with your video. Thank you so much for your explanations.

[@kelsangsherab131]

Many thanx. I couldn't understand why the symlink where not working. Put the complete path and it now does.thank you. Your videos are informative and well explained.

[@polliluiz]

The best video ever Jay. Congrats!

[@agustinluengo3323]

Thanks

[@reveng6705]

dude.. the information I get from your videos is INVALUABLE!! Thank you very much for your great work!

[@chrits3396]

Thanks for the detailed video tutorial. I am currently studying for RHSA and needed details.

[@greenfairy1034]

Thankyou for this video. I have subscribed and liked. I am in college for cybersecurity and am taking Linix Admin class and this video has helped me very much.

[@ChristianPadilla-zz3hs]

can't believe this is free out here. Thanks for the great explanation.

[@juliettetworsey3060]

Thank you Jay for this awesome tutorial on symbolic links!

[@attutorials2121]

Great tutorial! I did not even notice how these 30 minutes passed!

[@h2o40fpv]

I don't know why but i believe everything this two person describe. Great video thank u.

[@ShrirajHegde]

DING (desktop icons NG) allows drag drop support

[@kadirsuzen6696]

love the content love the way of explaining thanks!!!!!!

[@ropperish]

Your crontributions to the comunity are so huge Jay!! Thank you very much. There should be a Linux distro named after you. Jaynux!! 🤣

[@garethsutcliffe5680]

Superb video, as always. You've been a massive help to me delving into Linux. On a different note, the colours in the video seem a bit washed out, not noticed that on your other videos.

[@srsr6099]

Amazing work Jay any light on root file & shadow file would be greatly appreciated

[@pju28]

Is it possible to change the icon Grafik too?

[@name1355_0ne]

Thanks for the thorough explanation!

[@nsxlai2000]

For hard link, how can you tell which is the source file since they all shared the same inode number? Or it doesn’t matter because every hard link file is the same?

[@zymagoras]

It doesn't matter, they're all referencing to the same data location on your partition table. You could check when each file was created I suppose but it doesn't really matter, as long as you have at least one hard link to that data location.

[@chicotebelsonda5507]

Thank you for the thorough tutorial.

[@Jure1234567]

You can track hard links by LS table column with hard links count

[@markganus1085]

Die meisten Prozesse, die im Allgemeinen Nachrichten über ein Netzwerk empfangen, sind für diesen speziellen Zweck konzipiert. Diese Prozesse werden auch Daemons genannt.

[@srikantht2403]

Thank you for the video it was awesome

[@BrucesWorldofStuff]

Symlinks are very useful like you stated. Also true don't go nuts with them... One good use case is a script that is not in your path but you want to use it, so a symlink works well for that. I do that on several files on my desktop that are link to files on my server master document folder, that works well from all my desktops... :-) I also symlinked a few directories on my server which are on another drive in the server... They work great, just don't make a sym of a sym that will muck up the works... LOL Thanks for the video! LLAP

[@kennis942]

first, also keep up the good work! just what i need

[@MiniLuv-1984]

That was great Jay. What then is the value of a hard link? Did I miss this?

[@baberali95]

very nice and easy to understand thanx

[@rmcellig]

Excellent video!! Thanks Jay!! I have a folder that contains sub folders. The sub folders contain audio files. I want to create links to these files and have them in a specific folder. How do I do this? A video would be great.

[@def__luisAM95__]

Thank you very much sir. Very clearly.

[@techofe-anopensourcebasedd5822]

Great, thanks J.

[@ДаниелДианов]

Thank you for these videos, sir. I've learned a lot from your channel. I would like to ask something though - you say symbolic links can be transferred on a flash drive. I assume when you open this symbolic link which is inside the flash drive it's referencing the original file on the machine hard drive. What happens if the original file is deleted from the hard drive or it's renamed? Is that leading to an error and broken file (symbolic link) inside the flash drive?

[@slinkyapex8150]

i got a question i created a simbolic link in my subdirectory but is red but in my home directory is light blue how do i change my link to light blue

[@SabinCheruvattil]

Great effort, thanks. It will be better to have `stat FILE` also.

[@udayarpandey3937]

Very clear and precise.

[@send2gl]

I shall have to look into using them more, I have a partitioned drive with three Linux distros (and Windows but never use it), my main Ubuntu system plus two others. Handy to have a link to main Home directory when using my secondary systems but found the link initially worked then broke. Not sure why, I probably altered something maybe. Shall look in to it deeper as you said symbolic links can span file systems.

[@kentw.england2305]

How do the permissions interact?

[@Eimantasks]

This was amazing!!!

[@xrafter]

You forget to tell that the second field of ls is the number of links/hardlinks of a file.

[@paulmacgiollacaoine8619]

Nicely done sir 👍

[@stevefiorito5379]

Are Custom Folder icons symlinks or hard links? If neither, what are they?

[@Jure1234567]

Windows symbolic links have working directory parameter, how to do it on Linux?

[@ScreenPrintR]

I’m sorry what is the name of your book? Maybe other books too?

[@sanatdhobi5418]

I have question that how can I know that given symbolic link is cyclic or not through command or code?

[@chbihmrabih9666]

Love u man🤝

[@Hailfire2455]

Thank You Sir.!!!

[@classactionsteve]

Could this kind of error be tied to symlinks? no such file or directory /usr/local/

[@Swanicorn]

Have you addressed why you are not on LBRY/Odysee? You can automate the whole process including copying the description from YT.

[@mason8714]

Just a quick question - I understand why you would use soft links for "shortcuts for example" but can someone explain to me a scenario where you would use hard links in a server enviroment for example? thanks for this am taking the lpic essentials exam soon and kept failing on the test questions on symbolic links. you have explained it perfectly!

[@unbekannter_Nutzer]

If you need the same content on different locations, and don't want the data to be duplicated on disk, because it is huge, then you might use a hardlink. For that reason you might use a symlink as well, but a symlink is more appropriate, if there is a definitive autoritative place for the file. For example, you might have a symlink chain "java" -> "java-18" -> "java18.3" and another one "java19"-> "java19.01" where java19 is an unstable branch, you use for experimenting. With a simple command you may change the symlink "java" from "java18" to "java19" and back, and when an update occurs, you use "java18.4" as new target for java18 and java19.2 as new target for java19, but for compiliation, you always use "java/bin/javac" which then points to most recent version while you might still keep the older version, if the new one reveals some serious bugs. But if you have 2 links a/hugefile and b/hugefile, and they will expire idependently, and you don't know ahead of time, which will expire first, you may delete them in any order before the disk space is freed, because there is a counter at the inode, which counts the number of hardlinks to the file, and only if it is zero, the file is really wiped from disk.

[@82732726]

I hope this request for assistance does not sound confusing. User1 and User2 are using Win10, and the file server is a Samba Serveron Ubuntu 18.04. My question is related to permissions. I am trying to create a symbolic link to a TEST folder with subfolders from User1 directory to User2 directory. Example: User1 has a folder called TEST that contains many sub-folders. I am trying to create a symbolic link of the TEST folder for User2 to access User1 and User2 are in a group called assistant. I added the assistant group with rw- to the TEST folder using ACL. When I create a Symbolic Link of the TEST folder in one of the User2 directories, User2 is not seeing the TEST folder. The symbolic link and this content are accessible from the Ubuntu command line, but it is not accessible to me in Windows even as an administrator. I do not know what I am doing wrong, and I would appreciate your help greatly.

[@jatinsw1128]

Can there be a link to a link? And isn’t hard link copy paste?

[@pistolerointergalactico9019]

Thank you

[@hillybill]

I love your videos

[@736939]

YOU ARE THE BEST!!!

[@agr-tech]

how do you know a file is a hard link? looks like a normal file

[@raheelmasood8656]

Please start a VMWare series

[@debeeriz]

l moved my downloads, movies and music directories from my ssd to a spinning drive and used symlinks, if l had used hard links would that mean the same directories would exist on both drives and l would not save space on my ssd

[@xrafter]

Good question

[@Gaius__]

Yes, precisely. If you watch the relevant parts of the video again, you will notice that the symlinks Jay created had a size of 23 or so bytes, whereas the hard links were the same size as the file itself, 1000-something bytes.

[@arvindersingh9863]

What is the difference between rm and truncate command?

[@xrafter]

rm removes a file Truncate truncate a file in other words reduce its size

[@tomdaichendt9013]

truncate does not have a m

[@MonchoDeLaMota]

Yeah I’m really gonna become a country ass patreon subscriber

[@skeeveskeeve]

does anyone know how to create a link to a wine program that has spaces in the name?

[@Gaius__]

There are two ways to do that: 1) /Directory/'this is my file.txt' 2) /Directory/this \is \my \file.txt

[@DrSougataBanerjee]

I am confused about one thing - if a hard link is simply a duplicate object, then why shouldn't I use cp (copy command)?!? I am a dumb linux noob.

[@subtitles1492]

3:33

[@mehmetdemir-lf2vm]

there is not a "hard link". there is "the same file located in different directories and/or with different names".

[@mason8714]

if its the same file in 2 different places, if you edit one file will it edit the second file the same?

[@BC-ml1mo]

@@mason8714 yes - if it's hard-linked

[@lsatenstein]

You look better without the beard

[@user-jf7zz4fv5]

เรียน ชาวพุทธ ขอพวกท่านใจเย็นๆและทบทวนข้อความที่ข้าพเจ้า เขียน ว่าจริงหรือเท็จ? 1 สมมติว่า มีการเวียนว่ายตายเกิด อัลเลาะห์จะให้ใครเกิด ผู้นั้นก็ต้องเกิด ยังไงคนที่อ้างว่าตนเองนิพพานแล้วนั้นก็ต้องเกิดอีก 2 สมมติว่า มีนิพพาน พวกเทวดาก็ควรจะนิพพานก่อนมนุษย์ เพราะพวกเขามีคุณธรรม มีศีลธรรมมากกว่ามนุษย์ ๓ เป็นแค่มนุษย์ควรรู้จักที่ต่ำที่สูง แค่นั่งสมาธิได้ แล้วมาอวดเก่ง อวดดี ยกตนว่าดีเลิศประเสริฐสุด ว่าตนเองดีเลิศกว่าเทวดานั้น มันไม่สมควรเลย ๔ เมื่อไม่อยากเกิด ไม่อยากมีตัวตน ณ ที่แห่งใดเลย เมื่อรับโทษในนรกหมดแล้ว อัลเลาะห์ก็จะให้ผู้นั้นไม่มีตัวตนก็ได้ ไม่จำเป็นต้องนิพพาน ๕ แต่ถ้าให้เรา มีตัวตนแบบเทวดา มีสุขนิัรันดร นั่นมันไม่ดีกว่านิพพานหรือ? ๖ แท้จริงนิพพานคือฝันลมแล้งๆมโนขึ้นเองของคนอินเดียชื่อ นาย สิทธัตถะ ๗ ผู้ที่ให้เกิดให้ตายคืออัลเลาะห์พระผู้สูงสุด พระผู้ควบคุมสรรพสิ่ง ๘ อัลเลาะห์คือ พระผู้เป็นเจ้าของเราที่แท้จริง เราอย่าตั้งผู้ใดในหมู่มนุษย์ขึ้นเทียบเคียง

[@pankajkharade6936]

👍👍👍👍

[@motoryzen]

Symbolic links = useless to me. They never work... Never.

[@Neater_profile]

Fifth.

[@AdvaTced]

you just wasted 4 minutes of our time for those advertises... not cool