[ale] Strange filesystem behavior

[Michael Hirsch]

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