The paths /var/www/index.html and /srv/site/index.html sit on the same filesystem. Which command's output settles whether they are two names for one inode rather than two independent copies?
LPIC-1 Exam 101-500, objective 104. Devices, Linux filesystems, filesystem hierarchy standard easy
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The options
Correct ls -i /var/www/index.html /srv/site/index.html
Correct. -i prints each entry's inode number. Identical inode numbers on the same filesystem mean the two names refer to one and the same file.
Not correct ls -l /var/www/index.html /srv/site/index.html
Wrong on its own. The long listing shows a link count, so a count above 1 tells you other names exist, but it never tells you which names those are.
Not correct ls -s /var/www/index.html /srv/site/index.html
Wrong. -s reports allocated size in blocks. Two separate copies of the same content would show exactly the same figure.
Not correct file /var/www/index.html /srv/site/index.html
Wrong. file guesses content type from magic bytes. It says both are HTML documents whether they share an inode or not.
Why
Identity on a filesystem is the inode number, not the name: every name in a directory is a pointer to an inode, and hard-linked names point at the same one. ls -i exposes that number, and stat prints it too. The link count in ls -l is the count of names attached to the inode, which is a hint that hard links exist but never says where they are; find -samefile or find -inum is how you locate them.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- manual page ls(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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