What are Keeplink and Symlink?

[TigerTime]

Hi,

I'm new to FileBot and I've searched all over for a comprehensive list of all of the features and options. I've found nothing that explains Keeplink and Symlink. What do they do? I'd suggest to make this information is easier to find.

[rednoah]

1.
Symbolic links, or symlinks, are a very common and very fundamental file system concept that is common to all Unix-like operating systems:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolic_link

Although Windows has had support for symlinks since NTFS was introduced, it's not commonly used on Windows. Note that Windows Shortcuts (i.e. *.lnk files) are the same on the conceptual level, but completely different on the operating system and file system level.

I do not recommend using symlinks on Windows, unless you know what you're doing and do want symlinks for one reason or another.


2.
Keeplink is a FileBot concept, where instead of creating a symlink at the target path linking back to the original path, FileBot will physically move the file, and then create a symlink at the original path, forwarding to the new file location.


3.
Hardlink is definitely something you'll want to look into though, because it's a powerful concept that can save you a lot of time and disk space, and you're already familiar with the concept, albeit unknowingly, because every "file" is a "hardlink" and vice versa:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_link#Example

[DarfNader]

Having only just now discovered the Keeplink, I have to say it's a superb feature. So much thought went into Filebot!

[rednoah]

Having only just now discovered the Keeplink, I have to say it's a superb feature. So much thought went into Filebot!

I'd personally recommend sticking to hardlink or CoW clone operations though, because symbolic links make things unnecessarily complicated.

[mouzzampk2014]

I used this

Code: Select all

--action keeplink

and files moved successfully. But how can I verify if it's not taking twice the space or how can I check keeplink actually worked. Definitely there wasn't any error and files moved, just want to check files with keeplink?

[rednoah]

Go to the original file path. Do ls -l. See if it's a symlink.

[mouzzampk2014]

Go to the original file path. Do ls -l. See if it's a symlink.

Slick functionality, I have two external drives connected to NUC 2x 28TB so hardlinks only works withing one drive but keeplink resolved this issue

Nice work

[devster]

Symlinks make things easier when using torrents and crossing filesystem boundaries, I'd argue they're the only option in that case.
Things are harder though if you have to rebuild your library in reverse.