14.04binaryextensionsymbolic-link
When I create a symlink for a bin file(on Ubuntu 14.04 or 16.04) and rename it "readme", it shows as a link to text file. Also, when i checked the properties of this file, it says "Link to text/document". The strange thing is that the icon also changes to that of a text file from that of a bin file. Moreover, only when I change the filename to "readme" does that happen. If i rename the link to, say, "abc", it shows as a link to bin file with a bin icon.
Why is that?
Forget about the concept of "file extensions" that thing is completely made up and useless. For example somebody could rename a music file on your system to garbage.gbr and since windows interprets extensions literally as file types it wouldn't even know that the file was a music file.
In Ubuntu on the other hand, you can name a file whatever you wish. You don't even have to choose an extension if you don't feel like it. Ubuntu will read the MIME type of the file and understand what type it is. Based on the file type it will associate it to the appropriate program to open it. You still have all the control you need. You can change the default program associated with a MIME type in several ways.
To change default program association of a file type, just right click on a file with that type and choose Properties and go to Open With tab.
Now that being said, I should mention that extensions are not completely useless in Ubuntu. They still provide a standard way to tag a file for easy identification of its type -- but they don't set the file type. The only exception to this is when saving a file in some applications that support saving in several different formats. When you provide a file name in those application it can read the extension you provided and based on that decides how to create and save your new file with the correct mime type. For example if you open a JPEG file in GIMP and then choose save as ... and enter image.png, GIMP opens the PNG file dialogue and lets you save the file with PNG MIME Type.
Is there a way to keep a symlink to a file on a mounted network disk after reboot? Am I doing it wrong?
Nope. You can re-create the link on reboot if you want. But the more logical method would be to use the bind option from mount. From man page:
Bind mount operation
Remount part of the file hierarchy somewhere else. The call is:
mount --bind olddir newdir
or by using this fstab entry:
/olddir /newdir none bind
After this call the same contents are accessible in two places.
Best Answer
File Naming in Linux
There are files that are expected to be of a certain nature based on Linux File Naming Convention, these include names like
README, AUTHOR, THANKS, INSTALL, CHANGELOG, NEWSe.t.c. I believe Ubuntu is enforcing those conventions and naming any file with those names will automatically give them certain properties following Linux Standards and conventions.So its best to avoid naming files with those types of names. Please also look at
man fileto how that tool determines file types. You will find it a good read.Source:
File Naming Conventions in Linux
README