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Forum Discussion
mtozsu
6 years agoExplorer | Level 4
Hardlinks in dropbox folder
Now that Dropbox has stopped supporting symlinks within Dropbox folder (to folders outside Dropbox), my setup no longer works. I wonder if hard links from within Dropbox to folders outside Dropbox wo...
- 6 years ago
Hi mtozsu,
You are welcome.
Just to note: In "very system dependent" I don't mean OS! First of all to be able you must have corresponding permissions. Regular user don't have. Next, as I already noted, hard link and soft link are very different things. Soft link is on top level of your entire file system structure, so can point to, almost, everywhere and there are no too much additional requirements. Hard link is, in fact, change in the FS, so corresponding support have to be! In this context such a "link"s could "point" to FS entries inside particular partition, link from inside don't know anything about other places (drives/partitions and so on). Typically any abstraction layer above the native FS make hard linking imposible. And many other details could have some effect, so very important is the entire setup details. Generally hard linking is not best solution. You can try directory binding or 'opposite sym link' (actual directory inside, pointer outside). :wink:
Hope this helps.
mtozsu
Explorer | Level 4
Noted, thank you.
I should have checked whether I could create a hardlink first -- it turns out I cannot on a Mac.
Здравко
6 years agoLegendary | Level 20
Hi mtozsu,
You are welcome.
Just to note: In "very system dependent" I don't mean OS! First of all to be able you must have corresponding permissions. Regular user don't have. Next, as I already noted, hard link and soft link are very different things. Soft link is on top level of your entire file system structure, so can point to, almost, everywhere and there are no too much additional requirements. Hard link is, in fact, change in the FS, so corresponding support have to be! In this context such a "link"s could "point" to FS entries inside particular partition, link from inside don't know anything about other places (drives/partitions and so on). Typically any abstraction layer above the native FS make hard linking imposible. And many other details could have some effect, so very important is the entire setup details. Generally hard linking is not best solution. You can try directory binding or 'opposite sym link' (actual directory inside, pointer outside). :wink:
Hope this helps.
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