cloning a drive [was: war story]

[William Park]

On Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 08:20:46PM -0400, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
> | From: William Park <opengeometry-FFYn/CNdgSA at public.gmane.org>
> 
> | I can do 'ls -l' and it shows where it's pointing to.  With hardlink, I
> | don't know where are the other files, and have to 'find -inum'.
> 
> With a hardlink, there are no other files.  All are the same file.
> 
> I think what you mean is "with a hardlink, I don't know what other
> pathnames designate the same file".
> 
> Your wording suggests that you really haven't internalized the meaning
> of "file" in UNIX.
> 
> On the other hand, with hardlinks, you know how many there are (the
> inode has a reference counter).  Try that with symlinks.

I know what is an inode and what is an entry in directory table.  But,
I'm talking about how we use file everyday.  Given 2 files,
    /aa/bb/cc
    /xx/yy/zz
you would never know if they are the same physical file, unless you see
their inode numbers.  This means 2 steps, ie. 'ls -il' and then 'find
-inum'.  Whereas with symlinks, 'ls -l' is enough, and I don't have to
think anymore.  

Symlinks aren't all that bad. :-)
-- 
William
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