> I guess I COULD solve the problem by creating some directory called /hd2 and
> just having /usr /var and /home be sym links to directories in /hd2. Anyone
> have thoughts about having main parts of the directory tree be symlinks?
> Would I be better to use a hard link? Just wondering.
There's nothing wrong with using symlinks for this, in my opinion.
They're there to make your life easier.
That's why NT doesn't have them. :) Seriously, I think Microsoft's
viewpoint on symlinks is utterly bizarre. According to Ken Hoover's notes
over the summer from a Common Solutions Group meeting with Microsoft:
- Symbolic links [in NT]? (No, due to internal resistance -- Microsoft
needs to hear from people with specific examples of why this is
necessary because they do things differently.)
Please... take a look at nearly *any* large Unix machine for some good
examples of why symlinks are useful. In particular:
* Cross-organizational grouping. I have groups (a), (b), and (c) each with
subgroups (1), (2), and (3), and I want to refer to all (2)s in a single
directory for simplicity.
* Layers of abstraction. /home/b5 on Pantheon is a symlink to /home01/b5
because the partition that my home directory is *really* on can change
at any time, but ITS wants to provide an abstraction so that
/home/b5/bayern will always work for me.
* Crossing partitions, as Tim's talking about. Also, let's say I want
some config file in /etc to really be in /usr/local/etc (say, an NFS
share) because I want it to be shared among machines.
And probably otber common uses I'm not thinking about. They certainly 'do
things differently'. :)
> Would I be better to use a hard link? Just wondering.
I'm not sure what you mean by this; the question doesn't make sense. Hard
links are alternate names for one file (inode) in the same filesystem.
Shawn