Identifying Links to a file

devUnix · 12-23-2010, 01:48 PM

How do we check as to how many links have been created that point to a particular file?

Let's say there is this file /work/contacts.dat

and we have, let's say, 10 soft links that have been created by different users in their home directories. Now how can I figure by looking at the file /work/contacts.dat that there are 10 (soft or hard)links pointing to this particular file so that I know that it is being used or refered to by those many users and before deleting it I can check with them.

stress_junkie · 12-23-2010, 01:53 PM

You can see the number of hard links using ls -l

Code:

$ ls -lh test.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 user1 user1 300K 2010-11-03 08:44 test.txt

The number between the permissions and the owner is the number of hard links. The above example shows that the file test.txt has one hard link pointing to it.

The only way to find the soft links would be to perform an exhaustive search of the entire file system.

catkin · 12-23-2010, 01:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stress_junkie

The only way to find the soft links would be to perform an exhaustive search of the entire file system.

Actually all the file systems which can contain symlinks which (not tested) you could do with find / -L -samefile <your file>

devUnix · 12-23-2010, 02:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stress_junkie

You can see the number of hard links using ls -l

Code:

$ ls -lh test.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 user1 user1 300K 2010-11-03 08:44 test.txt

The number between the permissions and the owner is the number of hard links.

I knew it but was not sure whether the number would indicate total links hard and soft or only hard or only soft. Thanks for the answer!