What exactly is SYMLINKING??

[digital_soul18]

Hey guys

A very nice person on this board has told me to symlink folders of httpdocs and httpsdocs togeather in order for them to work without having two copies of oscomm on each folder and to make it secure, he gave me a reason like "its like a windows shortcut". This is something that I've never done before but I'm curious to know exactly what it is, I've already told my host to symlink the two folders togeather and they are going to do it tonight but I don't want anything bad or unexpected to happen once its complete. Can anyone tell me how good, reliable and safe this system is??

 

Thanks!

[Arcadiauk]

Do a search on google for symlinking, plenty of info there :)

 

This is where i'd start anyway.

[Guest]

It's another way of saying 'symbolic link' which is basically the same as a 'Windows shortcut', but the term usually applies to Unix-like systems.

 

What it means is that if you want to have the same file available from multiple folders/directories, instead of putting separate copies of the file in each place, you can just have one copy of the file, and then in the other folders you have a special type of file called a symbolic link, which tells the operating system to go read the contents of the other file.

 

There are a number of benefits to doing this. One is that if you want to change the contents of a file, you just have to change it in the one place, and since the other 'files' are just links to that file, they'll all reflect the changes. You don't have to remember to copy the changes to all the locations. Another benefit is that a symbolic link only takes up a few bytes of space, whereas the file in question might be megabytes, so you can save a lot of disk space.

 

Although I said 'file' above, it also applies to folders. You can create a folder that is symbolically linked to another folder, so when you browse that folder, you're actually getting the contents of the original folder, but they have a different path. That's probably what you were told to do.

 

There are probably some other benefits--as well as dangers--to doing this, depending on your needs. The Google suggestion was a good one. :)

[digital_soul18]

Yep, great that makes sense Unc, but is it secure??