| NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUE | ERRORS | CONFORMING TO | NOTES | BUGS | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON | The Linux Programming Interface |
LINK(2) Linux Programmer's Manual LINK(2)
link - make a new name for a file
#include <unistd.h>
int link(const char *oldpath, const char *newpath);
link() creates a new link (also known as a hard link) to an existing
file.
If newpath exists it will not be overwritten.
This new name may be used exactly as the old one for any operation;
both names refer to the same file (and so have the same permissions
and ownership) and it is impossible to tell which name was the
"original".
On success, zero is returned. On error, -1 is returned, and errno is
set appropriately.
EACCES Write access to the directory containing newpath is denied, or
search permission is denied for one of the directories in the
path prefix of oldpath or newpath. (See also
path_resolution(7).)
EDQUOT The user's quota of disk blocks on the file system has been
exhausted.
EEXIST newpath already exists.
EFAULT oldpath or newpath points outside your accessible address
space.
EIO An I/O error occurred.
ELOOP Too many symbolic links were encountered in resolving oldpath
or newpath.
EMLINK The file referred to by oldpath already has the maximum number
of links to it.
ENAMETOOLONG
oldpath or newpath was too long.
ENOENT A directory component in oldpath or newpath does not exist or
is a dangling symbolic link.
ENOMEM Insufficient kernel memory was available.
ENOSPC The device containing the file has no room for the new
directory entry.
ENOTDIR
A component used as a directory in oldpath or newpath is not,
in fact, a directory.
EPERM oldpath is a directory.
EPERM The file system containing oldpath and newpath does not
support the creation of hard links.
EPERM (since Linux 3.6)
The caller does not have permission to create a hard link to
this file (see the description of
/proc/sys/fs/protected_hardlink in proc(5)).
EROFS The file is on a read-only file system.
EXDEV oldpath and newpath are not on the same mounted file system.
(Linux permits a file system to be mounted at multiple points,
but link() does not work across different mount points, even
if the same file system is mounted on both.)
SVr4, 4.3BSD, POSIX.1-2001 (but see NOTES).
Hard links, as created by link(), cannot span file systems. Use
symlink(2) if this is required.
POSIX.1-2001 says that link() should dereference oldpath if it is a
symbolic link. However, since kernel 2.0, Linux does not do so: if
oldpath is a symbolic link, then newpath is created as a (hard) link
to the same symbolic link file (i.e., newpath becomes a symbolic link
to the same file that oldpath refers to). Some other implementations
behave in the same manner as Linux. POSIX.1-2008 changes the
specification of link(), making it implementation-dependent whether
or not oldpath is dereferenced if it is a symbolic link. For precise
control over the treatment of symbolic links when creating a link,
see linkat(2).
On NFS file systems, the return code may be wrong in case the NFS
server performs the link creation and dies before it can say so. Use
stat(2) to find out if the link got created.
ln(1), linkat(2), open(2), rename(2), stat(2), symlink(2), unlink(2),
path_resolution(7), symlink(7)
This page is part of release 3.51 of the Linux man-pages project. A
description of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can
be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.
Linux 2013-01-27 LINK(2)
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