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[previous article] [next article]A symbolic link is a file that points to another file in the UNIX file system. On a Gould everyone's home directory is either in the /x file system or symbolically linked to /x. Some people will notice if they do a finger on their login it will show them located in the /x file system, but if they are in their own home directory and they type "pwd", it will show them as being somewhere else, for example in /a. This is because their real home directory is in /a but there is a symbolic link from /x to /a.
The reason symbolic links are used in our example above with home directories is because a file system has a maximum size it can grow to before it runs out of space. When a file system starts to get near its limit the system administrator has to move some of the users and all their files to another file system. Once this is done the system administrator can make a symbolic link from the /x file system to the user's newly relocated home directory. This makes the move invisible to the user because they can still reference their home directory as /x/login .
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