I admit I am new to linux in general but I have a question that is puzzling me about the creation of symbolic links. I have installed Debian 4.0r0 'etch' on a IBM R40 laptop that I have and I am currently running Iceweasel 2.0.0.3. I was trying to install java 1.5.0 and I was looking at the following site:

http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/deb...bian-etch.html

and noticed that the creator was creating a symbolic link. He gives a brief description as to where he is pointing to but I am still perplexed as why he created it and how did he know to create that particular link. I realize that is bacically a shortcut but I guess I am confused as to why he created a link from Sun's Java plugin to Firefox's plugin dir. Is there a log that I am missing that tells me the directories can not see each other and that I need to link them?

Can someone elaborate more on when I would use a symbolic link and how do I know what directory I need to link to and maybe what file (does a file have to end in a certain extension or do I create a link to an entire directory everytime?). I have read the readme.txt file that came with the java download and didn't see anything that explained that I would need a link from one directory to another to make the plugin work.

I might mention that I use the Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 Bible as my guide to try and understand some of the features of linux along with my best friend google, but maybe I am not looking at the correct pages in the book or webpages. Also I have looked at the similar threads relating to his article but most are on syntax and issues and not when would I create a link and how do I know what directories/files I need to link to.

The symbolic link in the plugins folder is so the browser will actually use the Java plugin - on some distributions, the several browsers may get there plugins from the same directory (example, Mardriva Free usees /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins for all the mozilla based browsers it comes with)
as for what file to link to, that depends on the browser, the install instruction on the Java web site should be able to help you determine this.

For a lot of data,...http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/HOWTO-INDEX/howtos.html For Mozilla,...see http://www.mozilla.org For Java,...seehttp://www.java.sun.com