They're similar to shortcuts in Windows. You can place a symlink wherever you want and access the real file just as if it was in the folder in place of the symlink. The syntax for creating a symlink is:
ln -s /path/to/real/file symlink_name For example: cd /var/www/ ln -s /home/brent/myfile.txt myfile.txt would put a symlink in /var/www that points to /home/brent/myfile.txt. If your webroot is /var/www and you have FollowSymLinks enabled in your httpd.conf file, you would now be able to access myfile.txt. For more info try man ln. Be careful that you always use the -s switch when making links. A hard link (ln without the -s) is probably _not_ what you want. -Brent On Wed, 2003-06-18 at 16:51, Wade Preston Shearer wrote: > what are symlinks? > > On Wednesday, June 18, 2003, at 04:35 PM, Brent Thomson wrote: > > > Assuming you're using Apache and have FollowSymLinks enabled, you can > > make (you guessed it) a symlink to the file you want to give access to > > from a directory that is within webroot. > > > > -Brent > > > > On Wed, 2003-06-18 at 15:03, Wade Preston Shearer wrote: > >> does anyone have any experience with downloading documents (PDFs and > >> archives) via a script (PHP) that are outside of webroot? > >> > >> -wade > >> > >> > >> > >> ____________________ > >> BYU Unix Users Group > >> http://uug.byu.edu/ > >> ___________________________________________________________________ > >> List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list > > > > > > ____________________ > > BYU Unix Users Group > > http://uug.byu.edu/ > > ___________________________________________________________________ > > List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list > > > > > > ____________________ > BYU Unix Users Group > http://uug.byu.edu/ > ___________________________________________________________________ > List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list ____________________ BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ ___________________________________________________________________ List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
