LinuxQuestions.org - [SOLVED] Puzzled by ls output for /media directory

Hello :)

I'm puzzled by ls -l output for the /media directory and realised I don't fully understand what the ls long output columns show. The ls man page did not help. Here's the puzzling output

Code:

root@CW8:/media# ls -ld README hd* dvd*

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  500 2006-09-26 08:44 README

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root    4 2010-02-21 15:18 dvd -> dvd0

drwxr-xr-x 2 root root    1 2006-09-26 06:20 dvd0

drwxr-xr-x 2 root root    1 2006-09-26 06:20 dvd1

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root    3 2010-02-21 15:18 hd -> hd0

drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2010-03-15 11:13 hd0

drwxr-xr-x 2 root root    1 2006-09-26 06:33 hd1

What does the second column mean? I thought it was a hard link count but

Code:

root@CW8:~# find / -xdev -samefile /media/hd0

/media/hd0

[no further output]

The fifth column is the size of the file in bytes. That's why README is listed, to show that's reasonable.

symlinks dvd and hd have fifth column (spies!) figures the size of their target names. Reasonable but aren't such short names kept in the directory entries (dirents) themselves so such symlinks are not files; their file size should be zero ???

Regards the directory file sizes being 1 or 4096, a few files were written to hd0 while no file system was mounted on it. Presumably that made it grow to accommodate dirents and it went from being a dirent alone to being a dirent plus an inode so it had space to store dirents for its own files. The reported 4096 presumably represents this single inode. But why are the other directories' sizes 1? If my speculation is correct, these directories which have only ever been used as mount points so have never "contained any files" are implemented purely in dirents in their parent' directory -- so, like symlinks with short target names, they are not files; their file size should be zero ???

:scratch: :jawa: :scratch:

Best

Charles