Diff between hard link and soft link

[omegamark]

I am trying to relink oracle with OMNIBACK media manager in Hp UX .

For that I need to create a symbolic link to the omniback library.hear I was told to do a soft link and not a hard link ..

How do I know a link is hard link or soft link ...

[marist89]

ln -s is a soft link. man ln for explanations.

[macswell]

A "soft" link does not increase the inode count for the referenced file, a "hard" link does. To determine the inode count, execute an "ls -l" (long listing) on the either the link or the referenced file and check the inode count column (on HP-UX it's the first column after the permissions mask). If the count = 1, it's a soft link. If the count is > 1, it's a hard link.

Tim

[sambavan]

Hard vs Soft links

The way to find out is

Hard link:
If you do

ls -li source target

If the inode entries are the same and if the count is 2 then they are hard linked.

Soft linl:

if you do

ls -a

and if you see

filename --> linked_directory

Then its a symbolic link.

Hope these would help you...

Sam

[omegamark]

Thanks guys ...