Let's say when I do ls -li inside a directory, I get this:
12353538 -rw-r--r-- 6 me me 1650 2013-01-10 16:33 fun.txt
As the output shows, the file fun.txt has 6 hard links; and the inode number is 12353538.
How do I find all the hard links for the file i.e. files with the same inode number?
The basic premise is to use:
find /mount/point -mount -samefile /mount/point/your/file
On systems with findmnt you can derive the mount point like this:
file=/path/to/your/file
find "$(findmnt -o TARGET -cenT "$file")" -mount -samefile "$file"
It's important not to search from / - unless the target file is on that filesystem - because inode numbers are reused in each mounted filesystem.
find is clever enough to use them implicitely. Usually you have to give find a search path and have to tell it that is shall not leave these file systems (via symlinks or mount points). But when looking for hard links it's clear on which file system to search.
– Hauke Laging
Apr 24 '13 at 13:51
-xdev to avoid descending into directories in other filesystems, otherwise you might find another file with the same inode number located in another filesystem.
– mmoya
Nov 17 '13 at 17:46
-samefile on HP-UX is -linkedto (though it is slightly different: a search path must still be specified, for example).
– Dominick Pastore
Aug 27 '15 at 19:37
find /mount/point -samefile /mount/point/your/file
– Calimo
Apr 06 '17 at 13:30
If you already have the inode number you can use find's -inum option:
find /mount/point -xdev -inum 12353538
(some find implementations also support -mount as an equivalent of -xdev though only -xdev is standard).
ffind from The Sleuth Kit can find all the file names for an inode, including deleted file names.
For example:
sudo ffind -a /dev/sda3 $(stat --format=%i ~/just_a_test)
yields
* /home/me/empty_1
* /home/me/hard_link_to_empty1
/home/me/just_a_test
/home/me/hard_link_to_just_a_test
The entries with a preceding star are previous file names that don't exist anymore (because the file was renamed or deleted).
I use $(stat --format=%i ~/just_a_test) to get the inode of the file.
To get the partition of the file name programmatically (/dev/sda3 in the previous example), you can use df:
file=~/just_a_test; sudo ffind -a $(df -P "$file" | awk 'END{print $1}') $(stat --format=%i "$file")
With thanks to the previous answers.
Note that the stat binary can not only provide one with the inode, but its corresponding device's mount point too. The snippet below uses this to solve the 'usual' use case:
fn_hardlinks() {
declare target; target="$1" && shift
[ ! -e "$target" ] && \
{ echo "[error] invalid target: '$target'" 1>&2; exit 1; }
stat '/' 2>/dev/null 1>&2 || \
{ echo "[error] no functioning 'stat' binary found'" 1>&2; exit 1; }
declare mount; mount="$(stat -c '%m' "$target")"
declare inode; inode="$(stat -c '%i' "$target")"
[ "x${mount[-1]}" != "x/" ] && mount+="/"
find "$mount" -xdev -inum "$inode" 2>/dev/null
}
alias hardlinks=fn_hardlinks
and running:
> hardlinks ./resources/sphinx/gitinfo.py
/home/user/build/z-documentation/resources/sphinx/gitinfo.py
/home/user/build/sphinx-gitinfo/git/sphinx-gitinfo/gitinfo.py
PS: watch out for exit vs return depending on how you use this!
