symbolic link in USB disk

[James Wilkinson]

Yuandan Zhang wrote:
> thanks for info. I used to have a ntfs of this disk, but I can't write on
> it. that's why I converted it  to FAT fs.  I want symbolic links because i
> use this disk as a clony of a work dir for backup and homework purposes.
> there are a number of internal symblic links in that.

If you're just using this disk with Linux (or certain other Unix-like
OSes), then ext2/3 would be the way to go. But unless this disk came
formatted NTFS, I suspect there's a Windows machine in the mix. And
Windows just doesn't understand filesystems with symbolic links.

In this case, your best bet is probably to back up the areas that do
need symbolic links with tar (e.g)
tar zcf /media/usbdisk/linux-backup.tar.gz /path/to/Linux/area

One other thing: I presume that when you say "internal symbolic links"
you mean they're relative. A good example is /usr/tmp on a Fedora
system:

ls -l /usr/tmp
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root 10 Jun 29  2005 /usr/tmp -> ../var/tmp

Notice that /usr/tmp points to var/tmp in the parent directory, not
directly to /var/tmp. If /usr was ever mounted anywhere else (for
example, for rescue purposes, or under another Linux distribution), then
/usr/tmp would still point to the Fedora /var/tmp directory (or into
thin air if /var hadn't been mounted), not to the "host" OS's /var/tmp.

In your case, relative symbolic links will continue pointing onto the
USB disk if it ever gets mounted under another name or in a different
tree.

Hope this helps,

James.

-- 
E-mail address: james | Practically any car advert, for example, shows you
@westexe.demon.co.uk  | that if you buy this car you will get so lost that you
                      | end up parked (well, no. The word here is "stuck") on
                      | a mountain in Monument Valley.  -- Telsa Gwynne