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Full Discussion: Differentiate Soft and Hard Link
Top Forums UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers Differentiate Soft and Hard Link Post 302126149 by hemangjani on Tuesday 10th of July 2007 09:38:41 AM
Old 07-10-2007
Hope this helps:

Soft Link:
-------------

- Soft links are links to a file but not the inode.

- Created using
ln -s file1 file2

=> ls -il

131135 lrwxrwxrwx 1 user user 5 Jul 10 09:04 file2 -> file1
131137 -rw-r--r-- 1 user user 35 Jul 10 09:03 file1

- The inode for file1 is 131137 and inode for file2 is 131135.
- If you see the permission bits, there is 'l' in the front for a soft link.
- If file1 is deleted, the link still exists. But if you try to view file2, its empty. This means that once the main file is deleted the data is gone.


Hard Link:
--------------

- Hard links are links to inode

- Created using

ln file1 file2

=> ls -il

131136 -rw-r--r-- 2 user user 48 Jul 10 09:27 file1
131136 -rw-r--r-- 2 user user 48 Jul 10 09:27 file2

- The inode for file1 and file2 is the same (131136).
- If you see the output above for "ls -i", file2 does not show that it is linked to file1. In reality it is not linked to file1 but it is linked to the inode.
- If you see that there is number '2' before the username 'user'. This shows the number of hard links to the inode.
- If file1 is deleted, the data is not deleted. If you view file2 the data is still there. Deleting file1 only deletes a link. The data is gone once the last hard link is deleted.
 

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LEARN ABOUT HPUX

set_link

set link(1m)															      set link(1m)

NAME

       set link - Changes the value of a modifiable, single-valued attribute of a soft link

SYNOPSIS

       cdscp set link link-name attribute-name = attribute-value

ARGUMENTS

       The  full  name	of  the  soft link.  The name of the attribute to be modified.	Specify only one attribute at a time.  See Description for
       valid attribute names.  The value of a particular attribute.

DESCRIPTION

       The set link command changes the value of a modifiable, single-valued attribute of a soft link.	The following are valid attributes: Speci-
       fies the full name of the directory, object entry, or other soft link to which the soft link points.  Specifies a timeout value after which
       the soft link is either checked or deleted.  The timeout value contains both an expiration time and an  extension  time.  If  a	soft  link
       expires and its target entry is deleted, the soft link is deleted. If the soft link still points to an existing entry, its life is extended
       by the expiration time. Specify expiration-time in the format yyyy-mm-dd-hh:mm:ss (year-month-day-hour:minute:second).  Specify	extension-
       time in the format ddd-hh:mm:ss (day-hour:minute:second).

   Privilege Required
       You must have write permission to the soft link.

NOTE

       This command is replaced at Revision 1.1 by the dcecp command and may not be provided in future releases of DCE.

EXAMPLE

       The  following  command	redirects a soft link named /.:/admin/work_disk from its current destination name, /.:/admin/work_disk01, to a new
       destination name, /.:/admin/work_disk03.  cdscp> set link /.:/admin/work_disk CDS_LinkTarget = /.:/admin/work_disk03

RELATED INFORMATION

       Commands: create link(1m), delete link(1m), list link(1m), show link(1m)

																      set link(1m)
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