Linux update symbolic link

How to Create, Update and Remove Soft link in Linux and UNIX — Example

Symbolic link or symlink in UNIX or Linux

Difference between Soft Link and Hard Link in UNIX

In this section, we will see some differences between soft links and hard links in UNIX. These differences are by no means complete so please contribute if you know any other difference between UNIX soft link and hard link. You can also let us know about how you are using symlinks or UNIX soft links.

Soft link vs Hard links in UNIX

4) Another difference between soft link vs hard link is how you create them, To create a soft link called «current» that points to a file or directory called «new_package», use this: ln -s new_package latest to remember this command always remember that name of the soft link comes as the last argument. On the other side t o create a UNIX hard link called myhardlink.txt that points to a file called myfile.txt , use this: ln myfile.txt myhardlink.txt

Creating a symbolic link or symlink in UNIX

Now we will create a soft link in UNIX in symlink directory.

Updating a symbolic link or symlink in UNIX

Removing a symbolic link or symlink in UNIX

UNIX Symbolic link or Symlink Tips

14 comments :

@Helen Neely , Thanks you like this UNIX soft link tutorial. I agree these are most of these tips already known by users but this post is meant for starters and new comers and for those who already knows UNIX soft link it could be a refresher 🙂

@arapidhs, Thanks for your comment , good to hear that you like the tips.

May 14, 2011 at 8:12 PM Anonymous said.

Hi Can these command related to soft link and hard link is also applicable for other flavor of unix like Solaris and AIX ? By the way I really like your tips on updating Soft link in one step. earlier I had to delete and recreate the link for just rename. Thanks

November 9, 2011 at 2:54 AM Anonymous said.

Thanks for the nice explanation.
It really helped me

December 18, 2011 at 8:56 PM Anonymous said.

The best tip I got on updating symbolic link in Unix is using «ln -nsf» to forcefully update the soft link without deleting it.

January 29, 2012 at 9:13 PM Anonymous said.

Ahhh! thanks! ln -nfs works so wonderfully!

May 25, 2012 at 10:04 AM Jack said.

for updating soft link in Unix or Linux
ln -nfs is the way to go, forget about deleting old link and then recreating new link, just waste of time but that’s what I was doing from long time.

June 15, 2012 at 2:43 AM Anonymous said.

One small typo:
To create a soft link called «current» that points to a file or directory called «new_package», use this: ln -s new_package latest to remember this command always remember that name of soft link comes as last argument.

Instead of using «current» in the example, you used «latest»

August 13, 2012 at 9:12 AM Victor said.

What is UNIX Command to find Soft link or hard link ? I want to find all soft link and broken links in my server, do you know Which Linux or UNIX command I can use to find all symbolic links ? It’s ok if they find both Soft link and hard link , I am more interested on broken links i.e. links which are there but files or directory to which they are pointing is deleted or removed.

September 20, 2012 at 10:39 PM Anonymous said.

I guess you left out the most important thing related to the difference between sym links and hard links. Hard links have the same inode number, because they are different pointer to the same space occupied on the disk, while soft links have different inodes

Agree with above comments regarding soft/hardlink. When you delete source file with a hardlink, the file is still accessible from hardlink, that’s why hardlink doesn’t break. Hardlink and original filename are almost equivalent just like multiple points point to same memory in C.

November 27, 2012 at 8:40 AM BHS said.

Hi Javin, this was a great tutorial. However, just had a small recommendation. Going forward, it would be great if you can describe what each of your options stand for while using the command. For example, while updating the symlinks using the command » ln -nsf 1.3 latest», it would be create if you would have just given a short description of what n,s,f stand for. Like n—> treat destination as a normal file, s—> creates a soft link, f—> removes the existing destination files(from symlink).

This way it is easier for newcomers like me to know how it is actually doing it rather than just mugging up the command and not knowing what each of the options are doing and why we need those options. We would need to surf the net to understand these options then.

Other than that, keep up the exceptional work. I am active subscriber of your blog and its the first thing I use to refresh or understand a concept. Thanks a lot.

April 26, 2014 at 9:26 AM Anonymous said.

I am very much impressed with this website. I appreciate you for your effort.
I want to create a symbolic link in Java6 environment. Could you please give me an idea, how we can create Symbolic links in Java6 environment.

Thanks in advance.

I think Java7 having java.nio.File packages to support this.

July 31, 2014 at 11:12 PM Anonymous said.

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