symlink

[Auisce]

As I'm experiencing a lot of problems I've been reading a lot of posts on this and the Ubuntu forums.
People keep saying to symlink to this or that so I Googled it and found this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolic_link

but 'tis all theory. I searched the forum but couldn't find an explanation.

I'm sure I'm not the only person who would love a detailed explanation of exactly what it is and how to do it.

Would anybody care to oblige?

[javierrivera]

Re: symlink

The explain in wikippedia is quite good.

Think of it as a kind of windows shorcut on steroids.

The easiest way to make one is to drag a file in konqueror to another folder. You will be given 3 choices: Copy, Move, Link. Choose link.

You will be able to use this link exactly the same way as the original file to do any thing but deleting.

Deleting the link will not affect the original file in any way. Deleting the original file will make the link useless.

Javier.

[Lindy]

Re: symlink

As I'm experiencing a lot of problems I've been reading a lot of posts on this and the Ubuntu forums.
People keep saying to symlink to this or that so I Googled it and found this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolic_link

but 'tis all theory. I searched the forum but couldn't find an explanation.

I'm sure I'm not the only person who would love a detailed explanation of exactly what it is and how to do it.

Would anybody care to oblige?

From the CLI you can use the ln command. Say I'm wanting to put a symlink from the new version of the java plugin I downloaded into my Firefox plugin folder the command would be something like:
(as root or sudo) # ln -n <path from/ java/ plugin directory/ plugin.so> <path to /firefox /plugin directory>
You can read more about ln in the man page, but here's the breakdown on the options:
-b like --backup but does not accept an argument

-d, -F, --directory
allow the superuser to attempt to hard link directories (note:
will probably fail due to system restrictions, even for the
superuser)

-f, --force
remove existing destination files

-n, --no-dereference
treat destination that is a symlink to a directory as if it were
a normal file

-i, --interactive
prompt whether to remove destinations

-s, --symbolic
make symbolic links instead of hard links

-S, --suffix=SUFFIX
override the usual backup suffix
-t, --target-directory=DIRECTORY
specify the DIRECTORY in which to create the links

-T, --no-target-directory
treat LINK_NAME as a normal file

-v, --verbose
print name of each file before linking

more on the command line can be seen at: http://linuxcommand.org/

[Auisce]

Re: symlink

Thank you both. this will be very helpful to me and hopefully others too.