LOFS

[Zdenek Precek]

Please, could anybody explain the purpose of the existence of the so called 'loopback filesystem' in HP-UX?

As far as I can understand, LOFS does nothing more than an ordinary symbolic links already do: adds an alternate name to an existing directory.

The only valuaable reason which the LOFS could be used for might be the possibility to create the alternate path with read-only access. Unfortunately, in the manual page of the mount_lofs(1m) there is a big warning which discourages from using LOFS this way.

[Robert-Jan Goossens]

Hi,

Check this doc.

Submitted Date: 4/2/02
Title: How do Loopback Filesystems (LOFS) work ?
Document ID: UFSKBRC00009401

http://www4.itrc.hp.com/service/cki/docDisplay.do?docLocale=en_US&docId=200000080063018

HTH,
Robert-Jan

[Zdenek Precek]

Hi Robert-Jan,

thank you for your post.
Unfortunately it still doesn't answer my question: what is a difference (from the user's point of view) between these two things (using example from the document you pointed me at):

# mount -F lofs /oracle /developers
# ln -s /oracle /developers