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I’m trying to create a single relative symlink pointing public/train/train back to public/train, but my command ends up nesting infinitely. For example:

ln -snrf "$ROOT/public/train" "$ROOT/public/train/train"

After running this, I see:

public/ └─ train/ ├─ train → ../train │ └─ train → ../../train │ └─ train → ../../../train │ …

But I only want:

public/ └─ train/ └─ train → ../train

I need to keep the -r option so that the link target is relative. How can I create exactly one public/train/train→public/train symlink without further nesting?

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    How are you getting the undesired output? Using tree? If so, which version? Commented Jun 4 at 9:29
  • SInce, as explained in Stephen's answer, it's impossible to create a symlink in a directory that's not there when you look into that directory: Maybe ask a question that describes what you need to achieve! It seems symlinks are not the solution, maybe the bind mount as suggested paladin is – but we can't know, because we don't understand why you need this! Commented Jun 4 at 12:12
  • by the way, no, it does not recurse infinitely, Linux (and very likely all other operating systems with symlink support) have a maximum redirection depth. Commented Jun 4 at 12:13
  • The -r option is only relevant if the link text is a relative path, it has no effect if $ROOT is absolute. Commented Jun 4 at 16:23
  • I think the link you want is created. It's just the tree command that has a problem with it. It should work for other purposes. E.g. if you have a file named public/train/foo, you should be able to access it using public/train/train/foo as well. Commented Jun 4 at 16:27

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Technically, you can’t get what you want: train/train links back to the top-level train, which contains the train symlink, which links back to the top-level train, and so on.

The tree command on my system notices that the link is recursive, and stops:

$ tree train train └── train -> ../train 2 directories, 0 files

and it refuses to dereference the symlink even when asked:

$ tree -l train train └── train -> ../train [recursive, not followed] 2 directories, 0 files
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The best thing you could do is using mount --bind.

Example:

cd public/train mkdir train chmod 000 train mount --bind . train

This would allow only 1 times nesting for root, and probably no nesting at all for non root.

PS take also a look at What is a bind mount?

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