/g/ - syscall of the day: symlink(at) - Technology

Anonymous

syscall of the day: symlink(at(...) 03/13/26(Fri)08:57:48 No.108361692

File: 1711202897927508.jpg (364 KB, 1088x1754)

syscall of the day: symlink(at) Anonymous 03/13/26(Fri)08:57:48 No.108361692 Archived

previous: >>108354761
#define __NR_symlink            88
#define __NR_symlinkat                266
https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/symlink.2.html
https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/symlink.7.html

tl;dr:
create a symbolic link to a file

symlinks are rather neat. i recommend reading the section 7 manpage. it's pretty well written
i don't really have much to say about these, except that i use them all the time in /usr/bin to make my dmenu shortcuts nicer. e.g., one of the first things i will do on a new box is
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/firefox /usr/bin/ff
similarly, many versioned binaries in your bin folder will do something similar (e.g., gcc/clang will actually be a symlink to some specifically versioned binary)
so it's really handy for that sort of thing. how do you use symlinks, anon?

relevant resources:
man man
man syscalls
https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/
https://linux.die.net/man/
https://elixir.bootlin.com/linux/
https://elixir.bootlin.com/musl/
https://elixir.bootlin.com/glibc/

Anonymous
03/13/26(Fri)09:43:35 No.108361963

Anonymous 03/13/26(Fri)09:43:35 No.108361963

>how do you use symlinks, anon?
Once used them to grant a webserver access to the X server so that it could generate PDFs from HTMLs. Couple years prior I had written my own X connector, thus knew about the cookie file, and provided it like that.

Anonymous
03/13/26(Fri)09:50:31 No.108362009

Anonymous 03/13/26(Fri)09:50:31 No.108362009

File: 1750453058705884.jpg (75 KB, 735x658)

75 KB JPG

>>108361692
i use symlinks indirectly through using stuff like pyenv. i am but a lowly normalfriend so there is no real use for symlinks to me apart from that. i use .desktop files to create something akin to .lnk on windows.

Anonymous
03/13/26(Fri)10:28:13 No.108362257

Anonymous 03/13/26(Fri)10:28:13 No.108362257

>>108361963
that sounds crazy insecure, you were exposing that?

Anonymous
03/13/26(Fri)10:43:18 No.108362392

Anonymous 03/13/26(Fri)10:43:18 No.108362392

>>108362257
No. It was an internal service.