[ale] OT: Windows / NTFS link question?

Björn Gustafsson bg-ale at bjorng.net
Tue Jan 9 16:50:21 EST 2007


As I understand it, "junctions" are more like symlinks, and they only
work on directories, so that's not likely to be much use.

You can do hard links on NTFS (see
http://www.flexhex.com/docs/articles/hard-links.phtml for an example)
but I think windows file locking semantics might still get in your
way.  I'd recommend trying to use the cygwin subsystem or M*ft's
so-called "Windows services for UNIX" (formerly Interix) as a basis
for writing such tools.

As an even more OT aside, it's very sad to see sysinternals has
succumbed to M*ft's deadly embrace.  They made some really nice tools.

--Bj?rn

On 1/9/07, Brian MacLeod <nym.bnm at gmail.com> wrote:
> Greg,
>
> Would Junction from Microsoft (formerly Sysinternals) work?
>
> http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/FileAndDisk/Junction.mspx
>
>
> bnm
>
>
>
> On 1/9/07, Greg Freemyer <greg.freemyer at gmail.com> wrote:
> > All,
> >
> > I'm real familiar with how "hard" links work in Linux.
> >
> > I have a Windows program that if I was in Linux I would handle as:
> >
> > Process 1 creates docs in spool directory.  (Process one can be long
> > lived, ie. minutes, and multiple at once.)
> >
> > Process 2 looks for docs in spool  directory, links them to their real
> > destination directory, and then unlinks them from the spool directory.
> >  Due to the way Linux works, Process 1 would simply continue to write
> > to the moved file.
> >
> > I need to have the 2 processes because Process 1 is creating millions
> > of files in one directory right now and I don't have source for it so
> > that I could make it use subdirectories in the first place.  (Life in
> > the windows world.)
> >
> > Does anyone know if NTFS / Win2003 offer a similar function?  I know
> > about shortcuts, but that won't cut it.
> >
> > Thanks
> > Greg
> > --
> > Greg Freemyer
> > The Norcross Group
> > Forensics for the 21st Century



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