How do I create a symbolic link [duplicate]

I was wondering how to create a symbolic link in Ubuntu (12.04 LTS). I've done this before but this time it is a little different.

This command worked before.

user@desktop:/media/backup/folder$ ln -sv file.ods /home/user/file.ods

The last time I I created a file from my backup drive [harddisk].

Now I would like to create a symbolic link to a file present on a fileserver.

This is a virtual machine and probably a network connection to it is required. The fileserver (networkshare) is mounted at /media/fileserver.

I did try to use the same command as mentioned above, however, it create an empty file when opened it askes to be deleted because it is empty and useless.

When I do the command from above, it does not work. So, can someone help me out here?

Solution 1:

The syntax of ln command is:

ln [options] <target file> [link name]

So, this command should work:

ln -sv /media/fileserver/anotherfile.ods /home/user/anotherfile.ods

The s option creates a symbolic link, if omitted a hard link will be created. v means "be verbose", i.e. ln will show what it's doing.

You could also cd to target's directory first:

cd /media/fileserver
ln -sv anotherfile.ods /home/user/anotherfile.ods

Or cd to destination directory:

cd /home/user/
ln -sv /media/fileserver/anotherfile.ods

If you omit the link name, target's name is used. The above command creates a link to /media/fileserver/anotherfile.ods in /home/user/anotherfile.ods.