[ale] Strange filesystem behavior

[Michael Hirsch]

Thanks DJ and Jim,

  I guess it makes sense--I'm not sure why I never noticed it before.
I still have one file path that isn't resolving correctly, but I think
it is a slightly different issue.

Michael

On Wed, Apr 13, 2016 at 2:26 PM, Jim Kinney <jim.kinney at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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     VRTSat
> 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
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>
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>
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