[ale] Strange filesystem behavior

[jim.kinney at gmail.com (Jim Kinney)]

What you see is determined by how you got there. ../ backtracks through
your prior dir locations first.
So if you CD to a location by way of a symlink, ls ../../.. will show
up from the symlink, not the literal path.
On Wed, 2016-04-13 at 13:18 -0600, Michael Hirsch wrote:
> Can anyone explain this???The owners of this system use a lot of
> symlinks to play weird games with their files.??For instance, in the
> directory used below, /var/tmp/jobsched/jaws/conf the last entry,
> conf, is actually a symlink into another filesystem entirely.??But I
> still don't understand how this is possible.
> 
> Consider this:
> bash-4.1$ pwd
> /var/tmp/jobsched/jaws/conf
> bash-4.1$ ls ../../../..
> autosys_api??common??daemon?????????jaws.sh????????????jboss??log
> sbin?????sdk
> batch????????config??import_export??jaws.sh.vmoptions??lib????README
> scripts??tools
> bash-4.1$ cd ../../../..
> bash-4.1$ ls
> account??cvs????etscfg??lib????lost+found??mqm.client??phd????????run
> ???VRTSat_lhc??yp
> adm??????db?????ftp?????local??lum?????????nis?????????preserve
> spool???VRTSvcs?????zapplets
> cache????db2????games???lock???mail????????openv???????prodperim??tmp
> ?????vx
> crash????empty??gdm?????log????mqm?????????opt?????????redhat?????VRT
> Sat??vxvm
> 
> So when I "ls ../../../.." ls sees a bunch of file, starting with
> "autosys_api" and "common".??But if I cd to that directory ls sees a
> completely different set of files.
> 
> I didn't think that symlinks and filesystems worked like this.??I
> expected to see the same files in the two "ls" commands.
> 
> What is making this happen???What am I missing.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Michael
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-- 
James P. Kinney III

Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you
gain at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a dog on his
own tail. It won't fatten the dog.
- Speech 11/23/1900 Mark Twain

http://heretothereideas.blogspot.com/

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