| NAME | SYMBOLIC LINK HANDLING | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON | The Linux Programming Interface |
SYMLINK(7) Linux Programmer's Manual SYMLINK(7)
symlink - symbolic link handling
Symbolic links are files that act as pointers to other files. To understand
their behavior, you must first understand how hard links work.
A hard link to a file is indistinguishable from the original file because it
is a reference to the object underlying the original filename. (To be pre-
cise: each of the hard links to a file is a reference to the same i-node num-
ber, where an i-node number is an index into the i-node table, which contains
metadata about all files on a file system. See stat(2).) Changes to a file
are independent of the name used to reference the file. Hard links may not
refer to directories (to prevent the possibility of loops within the file sys-
tem tree, which would confuse many programs) and may not refer to files on
different file systems (because i-node numbers are not unique across file sys-
tems).
A symbolic link is a special type of file whose contents are a string that is
the pathname another file, the file to which the link refers. In other words,
a symbolic link is a pointer to another name, and not to an underlying object.
For this reason, symbolic links may refer to directories and may cross file
system boundaries.
There is no requirement that the pathname referred to by a symbolic link
should exist. A symbolic link that refers to a pathname that does not exist
is said to be a dangling link.
Because a symbolic link and its referenced object coexist in the file system
name space, confusion can arise in distinguishing between the link itself and
the referenced object. On historical systems, commands and system calls
adopted their own link-following conventions in a somewhat ad-hoc fashion.
Rules for a more uniform approach, as they are implemented on Linux and other
systems, are outlined here. It is important that site-local applications also
conform to these rules, so that the user interface can be as consistent as
possible.
The owner and group of an existing symbolic link can be changed using
lchown(2). The only time that the ownership of a symbolic link matters is
when the link is being removed or renamed in a directory that has the sticky
bit set (see stat(2)).
The last access and last modification timestamps of a symbolic link can be
changed using utimensat(2) or lutimes(3).
On Linux, the permissions of a symbolic link are not used in any operations;
the permissions are always 0777 (read, write, and execute for all user cate-
gories), and can't be changed.
Symbolic links are handled either by operating on the link itself, or by oper-
ating on the object referred to by the link. In the latter case, an applica-
tion or system call is said to follow the link. Symbolic links may refer to
other symbolic links, in which case the links are dereferenced until an object
that is not a symbolic link is found, a symbolic link that refers to a file
which does not exist is found, or a loop is detected. (Loop detection is done
by placing an upper limit on the number of links that may be followed, and an
error results if this limit is exceeded.)
There are three separate areas that need to be discussed. They are as fol-
lows:
1. Symbolic links used as filename arguments for system calls.
2. Symbolic links specified as command-line arguments to utilities that are
not traversing a file tree.
3. Symbolic links encountered by utilities that are traversing a file tree
(either specified on the command line or encountered as part of the file
hierarchy walk).
The first area is symbolic links used as filename arguments for system calls.
Except as noted below, all system calls follow symbolic links. For example,
if there were a symbolic link slink which pointed to a file named afile, the
system call open("slink" ...) would return a file descriptor referring to the
file afile.
Various system calls do not follow links, and operate on the symbolic link
itself. They are: lchown(2), lgetxattr(2), llistxattr(2), lremovexattr(2),
lsetxattr(2), lstat(2), readlink(2), rename(2), rmdir(2), and unlink(2). Cer-
tain other system calls optionally follow symbolic links. They are: facces-
sat(2), fchownat(2), fstatat(2), linkat(2), open(2), openat(2), and utimen-
sat(2); see their manual pages for details. Because remove(3) is an alias for
unlink(2), that library function also does not follow symbolic links. When
rmdir(2) is applied to a symbolic link, it fails with the error ENOTDIR. The
link(2) warrants special discussion. POSIX.1-2001 specifies that link(2)
should dereference oldpath if it is a symbolic link. However, Linux does not
do this. (By default Solaris is the same, but the POSIX.1-2001 specified
behavior can be obtained with suitable compiler options.) The upcoming
POSIX.1 revision changes the specification to allow either behavior in an
implementation.
The second area is symbolic links, specified as command-line filename argu-
ments, to commands which are not traversing a file tree.
Except as noted below, commands follow symbolic links named as command-line
arguments. For example, if there were a symbolic link slink which pointed to
a file named afile, the command cat slink would display the contents of the
file afile.
It is important to realize that this rule includes commands which may option-
ally traverse file trees, e.g., the command chown file is included in this
rule, while the command chown -R file, which performs a tree traversal, is
not. (The latter is described in the third area, below.)
If it is explicitly intended that the command operate on the symbolic link
instead of following the symbolic link, e.g., it is desired that chown slink
change the ownership of the file that slink is, whether it is a symbolic link
or not, the -h option should be used. In the above example, chown root slink
would change the ownership of the file referred to by slink, while chown -h
root slink would change the ownership of slink itself.
There are some exceptions to this rule:
* The mv(1) and rm(1) commands do not follow symbolic links named as argu-
ments, but respectively attempt to rename and delete them. (Note, if the
symbolic link references a file via a relative path, moving it to another
directory may very well cause it to stop working, since the path may no
longer be correct.)
* The ls(1) command is also an exception to this rule. For compatibility with
historic systems (when ls(1) is not doing a tree walk, i.e., the -R option
is not specified), the ls(1) command follows symbolic links named as argu-
ments if the -H or -L option is specified, or if the -F, -d, or -l options
are not specified. (The ls(1) command is the only command where the -H and
-L options affect its behavior even though it is not doing a walk of a file
tree.)
* The file(1) command is also an exception to this rule. The file(1) command
does not follow symbolic links named as argument by default. The file(1)
command does follow symbolic links named as argument if the -L option is
specified.
The following commands either optionally or always traverse file trees:
chgrp(1), chmod(1), chown(1), cp(1), du(1), find(1), ls(1), pax(1), rm(1), and
tar(1).
It is important to realize that the following rules apply equally to symbolic
links encountered during the file tree traversal and symbolic links listed as
command-line arguments.
The first rule applies to symbolic links that reference files other than
directories. Operations that apply to symbolic links are performed on the
links themselves, but otherwise the links are ignored.
The command rm -r slink directory will remove slink, as well as any symbolic
links encountered in the tree traversal of directory, because symbolic links
may be removed. In no case will rm(1) affect the file referred to by slink.
The second rule applies to symbolic links that refer to directories. Symbolic
links that refer to directories are never followed by default. This is often
referred to as a "physical" walk, as opposed to a "logical" walk (where sym-
bolic links the refer to directories are followed).
Certain conventions are (should be) followed as consistently as possible by
commands that perform file tree walks:
* A command can be made to follow any symbolic links named on the command
line, regardless of the type of file they reference, by specifying the -H
(for "half-logical") flag. This flag is intended to make the command-line
name space look like the logical name space. (Note, for commands that do
not always do file tree traversals, the -H flag will be ignored if the -R
flag is not also specified.)
For example, the command chown -HR user slink will traverse the file hierar-
chy rooted in the file pointed to by slink. Note, the -H is not the same as
the previously discussed -h flag. The -H flag causes symbolic links speci-
fied on the command line to be dereferenced for the purposes of both the
action to be performed and the tree walk, and it is as if the user had spec-
ified the name of the file to which the symbolic link pointed.
* A command can be made to follow any symbolic links named on the command
line, as well as any symbolic links encountered during the traversal,
regardless of the type of file they reference, by specifying the -L (for
"logical") flag. This flag is intended to make the entire name space look
like the logical name space. (Note, for commands that do not always do file
tree traversals, the -L flag will be ignored if the -R flag is not also
specified.)
For example, the command chown -LR user slink will change the owner of the
file referred to by slink. If slink refers to a directory, chown will tra-
verse the file hierarchy rooted in the directory that it references. In
addition, if any symbolic links are encountered in any file tree that chown
traverses, they will be treated in the same fashion as slink.
* A command can be made to provide the default behavior by specifying the -P
(for "physical") flag. This flag is intended to make the entire name space
look like the physical name space.
For commands that do not by default do file tree traversals, the -H, -L, and
-P flags are ignored if the -R flag is not also specified. In addition, you
may specify the -H, -L, and -P options more than once; the last one specified
determines the command's behavior. This is intended to permit you to alias
commands to behave one way or the other, and then override that behavior on
the command line.
The ls(1) and rm(1) commands have exceptions to these rules:
* The rm(1) command operates on the symbolic link, and not the file it refer-
ences, and therefore never follows a symbolic link. The rm(1) command does
not support the -H, -L, or -P options.
* To maintain compatibility with historic systems, the ls(1) command acts a
little differently. If you do not specify the -F, -d or -l options, ls(1)
will follow symbolic links specified on the command line. If the -L flag is
specified, ls(1) follows all symbolic links, regardless of their type,
whether specified on the command line or encountered in the tree walk.
chgrp(1), chmod(1), find(1), ln(1), ls(1), mv(1), rm(1), lchown(2), link(2),
lstat(2), readlink(2), rename(2), symlink(2), unlink(2), utimensat(2),
lutimes(3), path_resolution(7)
This page is part of release 3.32 of the Linux man-pages project. A descrip-
tion of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can be found at
http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.
Linux 2008-06-18 SYMLINK(7)
HTML rendering created 2010-12-03 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface