4

This one is probably easy for all of you, but I have never had to deal with such a nested local set of directories.

If I have a path like: /mnt/media2/Archived\ Files/_Transfer/ is there a way to "mount" that directory to ~/Transfer/ or /mnt/transfer?

I was looking into symlinks, but it talks about "how it's not always a good idea on directories because of recursive commands, etc..."

Thanks.

Kevdog777
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chow
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    This is what symlinks are for. Just try not to set up circular links, because that won't be useful to anyone, and you should be fine. – jw013 Sep 21 '12 at 14:43

2 Answers2

6

Symlinks do sound a good idea to me in this case:

ln -s /mnt/media2/Archived\ Files/_Transfer/ ~/Transfer

See also zsh's:

PS1='%~%# '
transfer=/mnt/media2/Archived\ Files/_Transfer/
cd ~transfer
Stéphane Chazelas
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  • For the section about zsh's above -- can I copy using that format too? I.e. cp ~/test.sh ~transfer/.? And do I still retain rw privileges in the linked directory? – chow Sep 21 '12 at 16:30
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    @chow They're called named directories. They work in all cases where the shell interprets the string, which includes passing arguments to commands – Michael Mrozek Sep 21 '12 at 17:26
1

If you don't want to (or can't) use symlinks (e.g., filesystem doesn't support, like vfat), you can also use a bind mount:

mount --bind "/mnt/media2/Archived Files/_Transfer" /mnt/Transfer

Beware that bind mounts are stronger than symlinks. E.g., rm -Rf will just remove a symlink when it encounters one; it'll traverse through a bind mount.

Bind mounts can only be done by root. Symlinks can be done by any user.

derobert
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    I do not recommend bind mounts for this. The directory tree will effectively appear twice for many purposes (backups, indexing, etc. — anything that traverses the directory tree). Symlinks are the right answer here. – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' Sep 21 '12 at 23:16