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    Linux: Symbolically Linking Files

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved IT Discussion
    linuxsam linux administrationsymlink
    14 Posts 4 Posters 3.2k Views
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    • scottalanmillerS
      scottalanmiller @iroal
      last edited by

      @iroal said:

      If I go to /var/log I can see the Link file created before.

      Hmmm... nothing should have been created in there. Which file appeared in there?

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      • iroalI
        iroal
        last edited by

        0_1455093508778_Clipboard02.jpg

        It's Centos 7, spanish. let my know if you need any test.

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        • scottalanmillerS
          scottalanmiller
          last edited by

          Ah yes, you have discovered a typo in my copying over from one system to the other. The linking command should have been...

          # ln -s /var/log mydir
          
          iroalI 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • iroalI
            iroal @scottalanmiller
            last edited by

            @scottalanmiller

            It works, thaks you.

            scottalanmillerS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • scottalanmillerS
              scottalanmiller @iroal
              last edited by

              @iroal said:

              @scottalanmiller

              It works, thaks you.

              Thanks for being an early adopter and proof reading my code for me!

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              • alex.olynykA
                alex.olynyk
                last edited by

                I created a soft link to /etc/firewalld/zones/public.xml and called it 'fw'

                But 'fw' is only available from the root directory.

                How can I make 'fw' available from anywhere on the system?

                scottalanmillerS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • scottalanmillerS
                  scottalanmiller @alex.olynyk
                  last edited by

                  @alex.olynyk said:

                  I created a soft link to /etc/firewalld/zones/public.xml and called it 'fw'

                  But 'fw' is only available from the root directory.

                  How can I make 'fw' available from anywhere on the system?

                  Well a couple of options. But you are kind of thinking of fw as an alias not as a symbolic link.

                  If you wanted a symbolic link that was really handy, you could make it directly under the /. So...

                  ln -s /etc/firewalld/zones/public.xml /fw
                  

                  Then to look at that file you could do...

                  cat /fw
                  less /fw
                  

                  Like that.

                  But likely what you actually want is an alias. What do you want to do with that file? Edit it? If so, use your editor of choice (mine is vi and we will cover why in a later lesson) you could do this...

                  alias fw="vi /etc/firewalld/zones/public.xml"
                  

                  Then when you run fw it opens the file instantly for editing.

                  fw
                  
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                  • BRRABillB
                    BRRABill
                    last edited by BRRABill

                    Not quite thinking what I was doing, I was trying to forward my /var/log to another folder without delete the original first. Duh.

                    Anyway, I ran this command:

                    ln -s /run/sr-mount/da71e8e4-27b9-f51d-3390-93793b0a2bfd/xenserverlogs /var/log
                    

                    And what it did was put a folder called "xenserverlogs" into the /var/log folder

                    Why did it do that?

                    scottalanmillerS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • scottalanmillerS
                      scottalanmiller @BRRABill
                      last edited by

                      @BRRABill said in Linux: Symbolically Linking Files:

                      Not quite thinking what I was doing, I was trying to forward my /var/log to another folder without delete the original first. Duh.

                      Anyway, I ran this command:

                      ln -s /run/sr-mount/da71e8e4-27b9-f51d-3390-93793b0a2bfd/xenserverlogs /var/log
                      

                      And what it did was put a folder called "xenserverlogs" into the /var/log folder

                      Why did it do that?

                      The format is ln -s existingfile linklocation

                      So you designated /run/sr-mount/da71e8e4-27b9-f51d-3390-93793b0a2bfd/xenserverlogs as the existing file. And you told it to make a symbolic link in the /var/log directory. Since /var/log already existed and you didn't specify the name of the symbolic link it had no choice but to use the default which is the "same as the original" which was xenserverlogs. So it created a link from /var/log/xenserverlogs to the file /run/sr-mount/da71e8e4-27b9-f51d-3390-93793b0a2bfd/xenserverlogs.

                      And be sure to never use a term like "forward" in conjunction with links, that's a very different concept and does not apply here. That will just confuse you.

                      BRRABillB 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • BRRABillB
                        BRRABill @scottalanmiller
                        last edited by

                        @scottalanmiller said

                        So you designated /run/sr-mount/da71e8e4-27b9-f51d-3390-93793b0a2bfd/xenserverlogs as the existing file. And you told it to make a symbolic link in the /var/log directory. Since /var/log already existed and you didn't specify the name of the symbolic link it had no choice but to use the default which is the "same as the original" which was xenserverlogs. So it created a link from /var/log/xenserverlogs to the file /run/sr-mount/da71e8e4-27b9-f51d-3390-93793b0a2bfd/xenserverlogs.

                        And be sure to never use a term like "forward" in conjunction with links, that's a very different concept and does not apply here. That will just confuse you.

                        So to confirm, if I had first removed the /var/log folder, that command would have worked as I wanted it to, correct?

                        scottalanmillerS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • scottalanmillerS
                          scottalanmiller @BRRABill
                          last edited by

                          @BRRABill said in Linux: Symbolically Linking Files:

                          So to confirm, if I had first removed the /var/log folder, that command would have worked as I wanted it to, correct?

                          Correct. Since /var/log is a mount point for you, though, that is not as simple as deleting or renaming. You have to stop it mounting first. Then you can rmdir /var/log. Then you can symlink.

                          BRRABillB 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
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