How can I symlink a file in Linux? [closed]

Answer 1

I find a bit confusing the terminologies "target" and "directory" in the man information.

The target is the folder that we are symlinking to and the directory the actual symlink (not the directory that you will be symlinking to), if anyone is experiencing the same confusion, don't feel alone.

This is my interpretation of creating a Symlink (in linux):

ln -s /FULL/PATH/FOLDER-OR-FILE-SYMLINKING-TO NAME-OF-YOUR-SYMLINK

You can navigate to the folder where you want to create the symlink and run the command or specify the FULL PATH for your symlink instead of NAME-OF-YOUR-SYMLINK.

cd /FULL/PATH/TO/MY-SYMLINK-PARENT-FOLDER
ln -s /FULL/PATH/FOLDER-OR-FILE-SYMLINKING-TO NAME-OF-YOUR-SYMLINK

OR

ln -s /FULL/PATH/FOLDER-OR-FILE-SYMLINKING-TO /FULL/PATH/TO/MY-SYMLINK-PARENT-FOLDER/NAME-OF-YOUR-SYMLINK

I hope this helps to those (still) slighly confused.

Answer 2

ln -s EXISTING_FILE_OR_DIRECTORY SYMLINK_NAME

Answer 3

Links are basically of two types:

Symbolic links (soft): link to a symbolic path indicating the abstract location of another file

Hard links: link to the specific location of physical data.

Example 1:

ln /root/file1 /root/file2

The above is an example of a hard link where you can have a copy of your physical data.

Example 2:

ln -s /path/to/file1.txt /path/to/file2.txt

The above command will create a symbolic link to file1.txt.

If you delete a source file then you won't have anything to the destination in soft.

When you do:

ls -lai

You'll see that there is a different inode number for the symlinks.

For more details, you can read the man page of ln on your Linux OS.

Answer 4

This is Stack Overflow so I assume you want code:

All following code assumes that you want to create a symbolic link named /tmp/link that links to /tmp/realfile.

CAUTION: Although this code checks for errors, it does NOT check if /tmp/realfile actually exists ! This is because a dead link is still valid and depending on your code you might (rarely) want to create the link before the real file.

---

Shell (bash, zsh, ...)

#!/bin/sh
ln -s /tmp/realfile /tmp/link

Real simple, just like you would do it on the command line (which is the shell). All error handling is done by the shell interpreter. This code assumes that you have a working shell interpreter at /bin/sh .

If needed you could still implement your own error handling by using the $? variable which will only be set to 0 if the link was successfully created.

C and C++

#include <unistd.h>
#include <stdio.h>

int main () {
  if( symlink("/tmp/realfile", "/tmp/link") != 0 )
    perror("Can't create the symlink");
}

symlink only returns 0 when the link can be created. In other cases I'm using perror to tell more about the problem.

Perl

#!/usr/bin/perl
if( symlink("/tmp/realfile", "/tmp/link") != 1) {
  print STDERR "Can't create the symlink: $!\n"
}

This code assumes you have a perl 5 interpreter at /usr/bin/perl. symlink only returns 1 if the link can be created. In other cases I'm printing the failure reason to the standard error output.

Answer 5

ln -s source_file target_file

http://unixhelp.ed.ac.uk/CGI/man-cgi?ln

Answer 6

To the original question:

---

'ln -s '+basebuild+'/IpDome-kernel/kernel /home/build/sandbox/gen2/basebuild/IpDome-kernel/kernal'

This will indeed create a symbolic link (-s) from the file/directory:

<basebuild>/IpDome-kernel/kernel

to your new link

/home/build/sandbox/gen2/basebuild/IpDome-kernel/kernal

---

Here's a few ways to help you remember:

First, there's the man page for ln. You can access this via searching "man ln" in google, or just open a terminal window and type man ln and you'll get the same information. The man page clearly states:

ln [OPTION]... [-T] TARGET LINK_NAME (1st form)

---

If having to search or read through a man page every time isn't for you, maybe you'll have an easier time remembering that all nix commands work the same way:

cp /file/that/exists /location/for/new/file
mv /file/that/exists /location/its/moving/to
ln /file/that/exists /the/new/link

cp copies a file that currently exists (the first argument) to a new file (the second argument).
mv moves a file that currently exists (the first argument) to a new place (the second argument)
Likewise ln links a file that currently exists (the first argument) to a new link (the second argument)^*

---

The final option I would like to suggest is you can create your own man pages that are easy to read and easy (for you) to find/remember. Just make a simple shell script that gives you the hint you need. For example^♦:

In your .bash_aliases file you can place something like:

commandsfx() {
    echo "Symlink:  ln -s /path/to/file /path/to/symlink"
    echo "Copy:     cp /file/to/copy /destination/to/send/copy"
}

alias 'cmds'=commandsfx

Then when you need it, from the command line just type cmds and you'll get back the proper syntax in a way you can quickly read and understand it. You can make these functions as advanced as you'd like to get what what information you need, it's up to you. You could even make them interactive so you just have to follow the prompts.. something like:

makesymlink() {
    echo "Symlink name:"
    read sym
    echo "File to link to:"
    read fil
    ln -s $fil $sym
}

alias 'symlink'=makesymlink

^{* - well obviously they can all take different parameters and do different things and can work on files as well as directories... but the premise is the same
♦ - examples using the bash shell}