hard links

[David A. Bandel]

On 10/27/07, Lonni J Friedman <netllama at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/27/07, David A. Bandel <david.bandel at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 10/27/07, Collins Richey <crichey at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Thought for the weekend.
> > >
> > > What is the purpose of a hard link, and does anything in Linux land
> > > use hard links?
> >
> > I'll answer your question in reverse order:
> > lots of stuff uses it.  look through /bin and /sbin using:
> > ls -ali | sort
> > here's my output:
> > david at tole:/bin$ ls -ali | sort | uniq -D -w 7
> > 2572294 -rwxr-xr-x  3 root root   25140 May 21 00:44 bunzip2
> > 2572294 -rwxr-xr-x  3 root root   25140 May 21 00:44 bzcat
> > 2572294 -rwxr-xr-x  3 root root   25140 May 21 00:44 bzip2
> > 2572296 -rwxr-xr-x  2 root root    2105 May 21 00:43 bzcmp
> > 2572296 -rwxr-xr-x  2 root root    2105 May 21 00:43 bzdiff
> > 2572297 -rwxr-xr-x  3 root root    3642 May 21 00:43 bzegrep
> > 2572297 -rwxr-xr-x  3 root root    3642 May 21 00:43 bzfgrep
> > 2572297 -rwxr-xr-x  3 root root    3642 May 21 00:43 bzgrep
> > 2572300 -rwxr-xr-x  2 root root    1297 May 21 00:43 bzless
> > 2572300 -rwxr-xr-x  2 root root    1297 May 21 00:43 bzmore
> > 2588739 -rwxr-xr-x  2 root root      61 Aug 18 21:49 gunzip
> > 2588739 -rwxr-xr-x  2 root root      61 Aug 18 21:49 uncompress
> >
> > So for example, when you call bunzip2 or bzip2, you're calling the
> > same binary, just with a different name.   This is like calling the
> > binary with different options, but easier to remember.
> >
> > Take a look at `man bzip2` to see what I mean.
>
> Redhat uses a softlink (symlink).
>
> >
> > ifup/ifdown on my system is the same as are many of the fsck binaries.
                           ^^^^^^^^^
please read the above phrase again

>
> ifup & ifdown are completely separate shell scripts on Redhat.
>

And your point is (other than whatever it is it has nothing to do with
the question at hand)?

Also, as you well know, I'm not running RedCrap.  However, if you look
through your /bin and /sbin directories, you'll still find some
hardlinks.  I haven't met the distro yet that doesn't use them,
although some may exist. They won't all be the same from distro to
distro, but they will exist all the same.

Now, what did your post contribute to this thread?

David A. Bandel
-- 
Focus on the dream, not the competition.
            - Nemesis Air Racing Team motto