[ale] Strange filesystem behavior

[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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