Скачать или смотреть Ubuntu: What is the difference between a hard link and a symbolic link?

Ubuntu: What is the difference between a hard link and a symbolic link?


The Question: As the title says, I would like to know the difference between a hard link and
a soft link created by the command ln. The command man ln does provide
information, but does not sufficiently answer my question.
Also, it would be nice if someone could provide a setting where hard link might
be preferable over a symbolic link.

Solutions Sample (Please watch the whole video to see all solutions, in order of how many people found them helpful):

== This solution helped 319 people ==
A hardlink isn't a pointer to a file, it's a directory entry (a file) pointing
to the same inode. Even if you change the name of the other file, a hardlink
still points to the file. If you replace the other file with a new version (by
copying it), a hardlink will not point to the new file. You can only have
hardlinks within the same filesystem. With hardlinks you don't have concept of
the original files and links, all are equal (think of it as a reference to an
object). It's a very low level concept.
On the other hand, a symlink is actually pointing to another path (a file
name); it resolves the name of the file each time you access it through the
symlink. If you move the file, the symlink will not follow. If you replace the
file with another one, keeping the name, the symlink will point to the new
file. Symlinks can span filesystems. With symlinks you have very clear
distinction between the actual file and symlink, which stores no info beside
the path about the file it points to.

== This solution helped 21 people ==
One of the answers from the other thread (now linked from the top of your post)
mentions http://linuxgazette.tuwien.ac.at/105/... which I think is a
fairly good medium-level explanation. If you're getting lost in the ascii art,
here's the tl;dr version:
Standard files are a pointer from the filesystem to an inode which in
turn point to physical data. The file component stores its link to the
filesystem (essentially its path) and a link to the inode.
Hard-links, are just like files. They're just an additional pointer
directly to an inode.
Symbolic-links are separate files (including separate inode and data)
that store a filesystem path to a file.
The kernel and filesystems involved translate everything transparently.
So based on that:
Hard-links only allow same-filesystem linking. Symlinks can point at any
path.
Hard-links (essentially) point to absolute data. Symlinks can point to
relative paths (eg ../parent.file)
By extension, if you move the target pointer of a hard-link (which,
remember, itself is essentially just a hard-link pointing to an inode),
the hard-link still works. Moving the target of a symlink would usually
break the symlink.
Resolving a hard-link would be faster but immeasurably so. That
insignificant portion of speed comes at the cost of a inflexible
filesystem.
----
I might have confused myself a little but reading through various things, I'm
struggling to find the difference between a standard file and a hardlink. The
way I'm reading it is every file consists of a hardlink (storing the filename),
linking to an inode that points at physical data.
Adding a hardlink just provides an inode with an additional filesystem-based
pointer. Is that right?

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