Re: [cobalt-users] Linking Multiple Directories

[Lillith Lesanges <lillith@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Monday, December 24, 2001, at 10:13 PM, flash22@xxxxxxx wrote:
> On Mon, 24 Dec 2001, John D. Gorena wrote:
> > I assume that I can be in /home/sites/site12/web/ and create a 
> > symbolic link from here to point to /home/sites/site10/web/manuals/ .  
> > I tried several variations of the following command: ln -s 
> > /home/sites/site10/web/manuals/ manuals/ but that does not seem to 
> > work. What am I typing in wrong?
>
> Don't put the trailing slash on the directory name, it's not part of the
> name...  I suppose i should point out that this probably won't work the 
> way you are hoping in any event, different sites are owned by different 
> users, you are
> asking the web server to read someone elses files....

Actually, it will work, assuming that /home/sites/site10/web/manuals/ is 
accessible through the Web.  Since, if that is the case, that directory 
and its files are world-readable.  Making a symbolic link to them 
doesn't change that.  So, the files may be owned by someone else, but 
that owner has already said that it's ok for anyone to read them, and 
that includes other users on the machine and external users (such as web 
broswers).

It's definitely non-optimal, though.

> If you are making them available to all users , you might be better off
> using Alias in the server config, which will make the web server 
> 'pretend'
> that directory exists but will in fact read the contents from elsewhere 
> eg:
> Alias /neomail /home/neomail/html

This is the more optimal solution, however.  Though, changing the server 
config by  hand can always invalidate your warranty, and I don't recall 
a way to do this through the GUI offhand. [1]


Lillith K. Lesanges
Sysadmin/Programmer, MIS, Inc.				http://www.misinc.net/

[1] Which in no way means that it's -not- there, just that I'm not aware 
of it.