Linux – How to you see the actual hard link by ls

filesystemshardlinklinux

I run

ln /a/A /b/B

I would like to see at the folder a where the file A points to by ls.

Best Answer

You can find inode number for your file with

ls -i

and

ls -l

shows references count (number of hardlinks to a particular inode)

after you found inode number, you can search for all files with same inode:

find . -inum NUM

will show filenames for inode NUM in current dir (.)

Related Solutions

Linux – How does du determine which hard link to disregard

Extending your test to three folders, you can see that only the first time the inode is hit does du count it. If you go into the individual folder and run du, you'll get the full size.

To test:

mkdir alexandru
ln mariano/zero_file.2 alexandru/zero_file.0
du -sh *

You should now see alexandru taking up the 500K+. So without looking at the du code, I'm guessing it stores a list of traversed inodes and doesn't revisit the ones already seen.

Windows – Is there a difference between the original file and a hard link to it

No they dont differ. A Hard link is created via mklink /H. Notice the /H switch.

I read somewhere that both files are attributes of the file in the master file table and that there would be no difference at all.

Correct.

If you ommit the /H switch, you create a junction or soft link

A junction (also called a soft link) differs from a hard link in that the storage objects it references are separate directories, and a junction can link directories located on different local volumes on the same computer. Otherwise, junctions operate identically to hard links.

via msdm

The difference between a junction and a hard link is:

hard links must be on the same partition. If you delete the last hard link, the file is deletet.
junctions can be on different volumes

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Linux – How does du determine which hard link to disregard

Windows – Is there a difference between the original file and a hard link to it

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