Hi Jim,
No. No matter how many hard links there are to a file, that file only consumes one i-node.

If you have a bunch of symbolic links pointing to a regular file, the regular file and each symlink will consume separate i-nodes; but even if there are a 1000 hard links (i.e., 1000 different directory entries naming a single file) to a file, that file only consumes one i-node.

Note that if you use the command:

Code:

ln sym link

where sym is the name of an existing file of type symbolic link, the standards do not specify whether the file named link will be created as a hard link to the symbolic link sym or as a hard link to the file to which sym resolves. (The latest revision of the POSIX standard added -L and -P options to the ln utility to let the user choose the behavior they want, but most implementations haven't released updates that conform to this version of the standard yet.)

Hi general_franco,
By definition, you can't hard link files that are on different filesystems.

When asking questions like this, it always helps to know what operating system you're using.

Have you tried:

Code:

find /u04/ -name example.file -type f

? Adding the trailing / to the pathname operand you pass to find will fail if that pathname argument doesn't resolve to a directory, but it should cause any symbolic links contained in that pathname to be resolved with or without the -L option.