Multiple symlinks to /boot

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#1

Hi,
I am using openSUSE 11.0, Gnome. Right now i noticed that i have multiple symlinks to /boot i.e. i can do this:

cd /boot/boot/boot/boot/boot/boot/boot/boot/boot/boot/boot/boot/boot/boot/boot/boot/boot/boot/boot/boot/boot/boot/boot/boot/boot/boot/boot/boot/boot/boot/boot/boot/boot/boot/boot/boot/boot/boot/boot/boot/boot/
Is this a problem and what am i supposed to do?

#2

That is not a problem, i also have it, it is not a multiple symlink, it’s a symlink pointing to that symlink thus you can do this :slight_smile:

#3

Thanks for reassuring me:). I meant symlinks to symlinks recursively.
Why are the symlinks present?:\

#4

I have no idea why is this symlink present in there :slight_smile:

#5

It is not a symlink pointing to itself. That would be

boot .... -> ./boot

and would create a problem when refering to it. But it is:

boven:/boot # l boot
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 1 Jan 12  2008 boot -> ./
boven:/boot #

So it points back to the directory it is in.

I also do not know why it is there, but I can imagine that something inside /boot points to boot/someotherthing instead of /boot/someotherthing. It may be a leftover from long ago or needed for a bootloading process that is pointed to a partition on booting and thus does not know exactly where /boot is.

#6

After thinking it over, I think the last sentence of my last post contains the reason.

GRUB only knows that it is send to a particular disk partition (it counts both disks and there partitions starting at 0). When it arives there it first tries to find out what sort of filesystem type is there (it can not work with all types, but that is another story). With its knowledge of the fs type it can then go into the directory tree there. In the GRUB configuration you will find filenames like /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22.19-0.3-default. So it should go into /boot. Now there are two possibilities:

a) The partition is the root partition of the system. In that case goto the directory boot. And see, there is a file vmlinuz-2.6.22.19-0.3-default.

b) It is a (seperate) /boot partition; goto boot, which is a symbolic link that leads you to the place where you are already. And see, …