Symbolic Links

A symbolic link is a special file in the root of IFS that has no size or content. A symbolic link points to another file or directory in IFS. All accesses to a symbolic link actually access what the link points to.

Web Server/400 allows symbolic links inside the document hierarchy. Symbolic links to files outside the hierarchy are allowable as long as the Server User Profile has *RX permission to the file and *X permission to all directories in the file's real path. For files in the QDLS file system, the Server User Profile must have *USE permission to all the directories in the file's real path and to the file itself.

Symbolic links to files in QSYS are allowed for source physical files and program-described physical files containing a single field. However, in order for a symbolic link to successfully follow a link to a QSYS object, the link can only be the last element in the URL. For example, if the path /link/ is a symbolic link to /qsys.lib/wwwsamples.lib/, then a request for the Web document /link/ would return a dynamic index of /qsys.lib/wwwsamples.lib/. But, a request for the Web document /link/SampleDoc.file would not work because the symbolic link in this path is not the last element of the URL (/SampleDoc.file).

Very long paths in the Root file system can be supported by using shorter symbolic links that point to deeper paths.