> Igmar Palsenberg wrote:
> >
> > >How do hard links and sym links differ?
> >
> > >Chris
> >
> > A hard link is just a copy of the file. A softlink is a real link
>
> This is not correct. A hard link is *not* a copy of the file, it
> is a copy of the file header linking to the rest of the file in its
> original location on the disk.
>
> If you take a file of size n and make a hard link to it, the
> disk use of the two will be n, not 2n.
>
> The disk use of the original file and a symlink will be
> n + <length of path to file>
>
Although this (last statement) is correct there are more aspects,
which should be mentioned, or expressed in other terms.
A hard link is a directory entry, which refers to the same inode,
as the original file entry. Therefor the link count for this inode
is incremented. This has some consequences: first, you cannot define
a hard link across partitions or drives. Second, when you unlink
one directory entry, the file is not removed, until the link count
is zero. Third, you cannot define a hard link to a directory.
A soft link is another file, with an own inode, that contains the
name of the file it points to. A symbolic link can point across
partitions, e.g. from a NFS partition to the local disk, but if you
remove the original file, it will get stale and point to nowhere,
since no reference count is used.
Andreas
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