symbolic link for directory

[tjay83]

Hi

Let say I have a directory called /opt/archives

In this directory I have some files and the space is filled up at the moment.

I want to create a symbolic link for this directory.
Whenever a file is created in "/opt/archives", it should be created in "/spare/temp" directory.

Since I have enough space in "/spare/temp" , space is issue would be sorted.

How can I achieve this?

[theNbomr]

First, copy everything that is in the archives directory to /spare/temp/archives (unless you just want everything to spill over into the /spare/temp directory. Then make a link to it from the /opt directory.

Untested...

cd /spare/temp
mkdir archives

cd /opt
cp -a archives/* /spare/temp/archives
mv archives archive_ORG  ## or delete the archives directory
ln -s /spare/temp/archives

That should do it.
--- rod.

[tjay83]

Thanks for your reply.
but I didnt get it.

So, in short,

I want to create symbolic link for "/opt/archives" directory to "/spare/temp" directory.

1-) Can I achieve this without moving the files in "/opt/archives" ?

2-) In /opt directory, I tried to issue "ln -s /spare/temp/ /opt/archives/", however it didnt work

[theNbomr]

1 - You can do it without moving the files, but then they will be obscured by the symbolic link, and inaccessible. I just assumed you'd want to retain access to any existing files.

2 - You can't create a link with a name of something that already exists. In your case, a subdirectory called 'archives' already exists in the '/opt' directory. What you tried to do would have created a link also named archives. That's why my example script renamed it to 'archives_ORG'
I don't think you can give a full absolute filespec as the last argument to 'ln'. It needs to be just a name, or nothing at all, whereupon it will use the last name in the link origin (the way I demonstrated).

--- rod.

[tjay83]

....You can't create a link with a name of something that already exists.

Thanks, thats what I am confused about