Question about the symlink of the ln command

Question

Can anybody give me an example why should we use the symlink kind of the "ln" command between files? I know that when you create symlink file, that file size is very small and it redirect to the main file.

The problem is when I created the symlink from a specific file (text file) from another directory, but I can't cat, less or any kind of print and view that file. Pls help me understand more about this type.

Thanks.

Solution

Let say you have a file named /home/george/Images/ubuntu.jpg and you want it to be available too in the /var/tmp directory, you can run:

ln -s /home/george/Images/ubuntu.jpg /var/tmp

Then, you can equally view the file using the /var/tmp/ubuntu.jpg path.

Beware not to miss to provide a correct relative or absolute path for the first parameter passed to the link command. This path is relative to the directory where the symbolic link resides. This is a common source of mistakes, like Nitin reply demonstrates.

Comments

[jlliagre]

It would help if you post the precise command(s) you typed. I suspect a path error.

[jlliagre]

Your command created a wrong symbolic link, i.e. you linked /pool0/manager/orig.txt to /pool0/manager/link.txt. The first file doesn't exist. This has nothing to do with the same file-system limitation that doesn't affect symbolic links anyway.

[Nitin]

file orig.txt lies in / while symlink lies in other partition /pool0/manager/link.txt which i tested.

[jlliagre]

As you wrote the command, orig.txt is in the same partition, but doesn't exist.

[jlliagre]

You should have typed: ln -s /orig.txt /pool0/manager/link.txt (notice the absolute path for /orig.txt.

[George Luong]

That's great. Now I understand it. That's just my typing problem haha. Thanks dude!

[George Luong]

Thanks for your test Nitin! That's just my typing problem... Haha.