/srv/media is a separately mounted filesystem. You want /home/carol/clip.mp4 to refer to the existing file /srv/media/clip.mp4, and /home is on the root filesystem. Which command produces a working second name?
LPIC-1 Exam 101-500, objective 104. Devices, Linux filesystems, filesystem hierarchy standard medium
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How these questions are written — where each question comes from, what the verification ledger records, and what happens when one is found wrong.
The options
Not correct ln /srv/media/clip.mp4 /home/carol/clip.mp4
Wrong. A hard link is an extra directory entry pointing at an inode number, and inode numbers are only meaningful within one filesystem. ln fails here with an invalid cross-device link error.
Correct ln -s /srv/media/clip.mp4 /home/carol/clip.mp4
Correct. A symbolic link stores a path as its content, so it can point anywhere in the directory tree, including onto another mounted filesystem.
Not correct cp -l /srv/media/clip.mp4 /home/carol/clip.mp4
Wrong for the same reason as option a. cp -l asks for hard links instead of copies, so it hits the identical cross-filesystem restriction.
Not correct mv /srv/media/clip.mp4 /home/carol/clip.mp4
Wrong. Across filesystems mv copies the data and then unlinks the original, so you end up with one name in the new place and nothing at the old path.
Why
A hard link is a second directory entry referring to the same inode, and inode numbers are allocated per filesystem, so a hard link can never cross a mount point. A symbolic link is a small file whose contents are a path string that the kernel follows at lookup time, which places no such restriction on it. The rule to carry away: if the two names must live on different filesystems, or the target is a directory, only a symbolic link will do.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- manual page ln(1)
Practise this
Reading one question is not practice. The trainer will draw a short set from objective 104 and space the ones you get wrong.
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