How do you find the symbolic links to files.

[Jay Windley]

tcurrey at x102a.ess.harris.com (currey tom 76327) writes:
>>    How do you find the # of and locations of all links to a file?

chuck at trantor.harris-atd.com (Chuck Musciano) writes:
>     This is an easy one.  You cannot.
>     
>     Well, sort of.  You cannot determine which hard links to a file exist
>without examining all the directories in a given file system, looking for
>the specific inode of the file in question.  Does anyone know of a tool to
>do this?

SunOS% find /foo -inum <num> -print

where /foo is the mount point of the filesystem and <num> is the inode
number will display the paths of all hard links to an inode.

>     Symbolic links are tougher.  Since sym-links can span file systems and
>NFS, you are not guaranteed to ever find all of them, only the ones in files
>systems you have access to.  You need to use find to find all symbolic links,
>and then examine the link to see if it points to the file in question.  This
>can be tough, since some links are quite circuitous and not at all obvious.

If you really want to, from a csh executing with root permissions enter the
following command:

SunOS# find / -type l -exec file {} \; | egrep <fname> > find.out

where <fname> is any hard link to the file in question.  This will bog your
machine significantly, so use at your own risk.  Upon completion, find.out
will contain a list of symbolic links to the file.

>     Easiest way: remove the file in question.  Wait for the phone to ring.

Well, I suppose this would work too, unless the file in question belongs
to your boss :-).
--
Jay Windley - CIS Dept. - Kansas State University
NET: jwindley at matt.ksu.ksu.edu  VOICE: (913) 532-5968  FAX: (913) 532-6722
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