On Tue, 20 Nov 2001, R & C wrote: > Hi All, > > I was playing around in the terminal located in the bottom window of > konqueror, issuing commands, and generally looking around and trying to get > comfortable using a terminal. I gave the following command: > > " ls -aop " > > -in my home directory. One particular file caught my eye because it was > highlighted in flashing red w/white letters. > > " lrwxrwxrwx 1 username 43 Nov 13 19:48 .#RMAIL -> > [EMAIL PROTECTED]:1005694765 " > > It seems to be a link to somewhere else but even looking under file > properties was unsucessful...."unknown" !
Yes you are right the file .#RMAIL is symbolicaly linked to [EMAIL PROTECTED]:1005694765. A symbolic link is effectively the same as current hyperlinks in html. If you read from the file the file system will follow the link and give you the contents of the destination. There is no checking by the file systems for valid symlinks and an open will simply fail when a broken link is followed. The other type of link which exists is called a hard link. In this case the file .#RMAIL can be thought of as an alternative name for the destination file and the destination file is not actually deleted from the file system until there are no remianing hardlinks (ie an rm of the file by 1 name will only remove that alternative name and not the file itself). The flshing red is simply a terminal thing to indicate that the destination of the sysmlink link doesn't exist. > BTW, I use KDE's mail client, KMail, on LM8.0 > > Can I get rid of it...or should I get rid of it? Is it normal/problem? No idea why the symlink exists. My guess would be that it's a temporary file used by the mail program. As for deleting or not deleting it, either should be file. I wouldn't worry about it too much in this case. If however this flashing link were in /usr/lib or /dev, for example, then it would be worth trying to figure out why the destination didn't exist.
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