Linux Crash Course - Symbolic Links

In this episode of Linux Crash Course, we take a look at symbolic links, aka "symlinks" aka "soft links". In addition, a brief discussion on inodes is featured, as well as the difference between soft links and hard links.
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#LinuxEssentials #symlink #CLI

[@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.

[@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.

[@chrits3396]

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

[@juliettetworsey3060]

Thank you Jay for this awesome tutorial on symbolic links!

[@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.

[@attutorials2121]

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

[@name1355_0ne]

Thanks for the thorough explanation!

[@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.

[@reveng6705]

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

[@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.

[@techofe-anopensourcebasedd5822]

Great, thanks J.

[@chicotebelsonda5507]

Thank you for the thorough tutorial.

[@ShrirajHegde]

DING (desktop icons NG) allows drag drop support

[@ChristianPadilla-zz3hs]

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

[@udayarpandey3937]

Very clear and precise.

[@srsr6099]

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

[@paulmacgiollacaoine8619]

Nicely done sir 👍

[@Eimantasks]

This was amazing!!!

[@BenMitro]

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

[@ropperish]

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

[@def__luisAM95__]

Thank you very much sir. Very clearly.

[@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.

[@rabinbhandari8480]

starts at: 3:29

[@h2o40fpv]

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

[@Hailfire2455]

Thank You Sir.!!!

[@markganus1085]

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

[@pistolerointergalactico9019]

Thank you

[@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

[@hillybill]

I love your videos

[@SabinCheruvattil]

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

[@736939]

YOU ARE THE BEST!!!

[@agustinluengo3323]

Thanks

[@kennis942]

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

[@chbihmrabih9666]

Love u man🤝

[@pju28]

Is it possible to change the icon Grafik too?

[@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.

[@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.

[@classactionsteve]

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

[@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.

[@Jure1234567]

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

[@stevefiorito5379]

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

[@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

[@xrafter]

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

[@Jure1234567]

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

[@sanatdhobi5418]

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

[@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.

[@skeeveskeeve]

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

[@MonchoDeLaMota]

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

[@ScreenPrintR]

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

[@kentw.england2305]

How do the permissions interact?

[@subtitles1492]

3:33

[@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

[@telosxian]

You cannot hard link between drives, so the assumption is incorrect.

[@Swanicorn]

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

[@jatinsw1128]

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

[@raheelmasood8656]

Please start a VMWare series

[@agr-tech]

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

[@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.

[@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

[@pankajkharade6936]

👍👍👍👍

[@lsatenstein]

You look better without the beard

[@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

[@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

[@Spiritualitydefined]

I have a game in wine and wont it on desktop, sorry noob at it.

[@user-oz3vl4xd1k]

Fifth.

[@motoryzen]

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

[@AdvaTced]

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