UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi All

I Know it is a really basic and stupid question perhaps...But I am going bonkers..

I have following valid paths in my unix system:

1. /opt/cdedev/informatica/InfSrv/app/bin
2. /vikas/cdedev/app

Both refer to the same physical location. So if I created one file 'test' in first
path, when i cd to /vikas/cdedev/app and do a ls -ltr, i see the 'test' file

When I do a df -k . on 1 and 2 above, i get the same mount point which is as follows:

/vikas/cdedev/app

Now, I am perhaps taking a long shot, but the most logical reasoning I can give myself is mount point is nothign but actual physical location in hard drive whereas directories are logical pointers to mount points. So 1 and 2 above are logical pointers to the same physical location. In other words, they point to the same mount point.

I might be way off. In any case, can somebody throw some light on following:

a. concept of mount point as well as Unix file system?

b. Is it possible to see which directories refer to one particular mount point by some unix command?

Appreciate it much.

Everything sprouts from a "root partition". When nothing's mounted but the root, it acts much like you'd think it would. Files are files, directories are directories.

Directories can be mount points. Mount a partition on a directory, and you see the contents of the partition. This lets you put partitions wherever you please, which is handy.

You can't mount the same partition twice, however! Could you post the output of:

Code:

ls -ld /opt/cdedev/informatica/InfSrv/app/bin /vikas/cdedev/app

I think one of them must be a symbolic link, sort of the file-equivalent of a hyperlink.

Also, you can list what directories currently have things mounted on them with:

Code:

df -h

Thanks for your reply

You were right

/opt/cdedev/informatica/InfSrv/app is a symbolic link to vikas/cdeddev/app.

I did not know that you could create soft links for directories as well. Thanks again for your reply.

Vikas

No problem. There's no limit on what kind of files you can symlink because all a symlink contains, is a path. It'll even let you link to files that don't exist, though they'll fail to open when you use them, much like a webpage 404.