redhat man page for namei

NAMEI(1)						      General Commands Manual							  NAMEI(1)

NAME
       namei - follow a pathname until a terminal point is found

SYNOPSIS
       namei [-mx] pathname [ pathname ... ]

DESCRIPTION
       Namei uses its arguments as pathnames to any type of Unix file (symlinks, files, directories, and so forth).  Namei then follows each path-
       name until a terminal point is found (a file, directory, char device, etc).  If it finds a symbolic link, we show the link, and start  fol-
       lowing it, indenting the output to show the context.

       This program is useful for finding a "too many levels of symbolic links" problems.

       For each line output, namei outputs a the following characters to identify the file types found:

	  f: = the pathname we are currently trying to resolve
	   d = directory
	   l = symbolic link (both the link and it's contents are output)
	   s = socket
	   b = block device
	   c = character device
	   - = regular file
	   ? = an error of some kind

       Namei prints an informative message when the maximum number of symbolic links this system can have has been exceeded.

OPTIONS
       -x      Show mount point directories with a 'D', rather than a 'd'.

       -m      Show the mode bits of each file type in the style of ls(1), for example 'rwxr-xr-x'.

AUTHOR
       Roger Southwick	(rogers@amadeus.wr.tek.com)

BUGS
       To be discovered.

CAVEATS
       Namei will follow an infinite loop of symbolic links forever.  To escape, use SIGINT (usually ^C).

SEE ALSO
       ls(1), stat(1)

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