1hardlink(1)                 General Commands Manual                hardlink(1)
2
3
4

NAME

6       hardlink - Consolidate duplicate files via hardlinks
7

SYNOPSIS

9       hardlink [-c] [-n] [-v] [-vv] [-x pattern] [-h] directory1 [ directory2
10       ... ]
11

DESCRIPTION

13       This manual page  documents  hardlink,  a  program  which  consolidates
14       duplicate files in one or more directories using hardlinks.
15
16       hardlink  traverses  one  or  more  directories searching for duplicate
17       files.  When it finds duplicate files, it uses one of them as the  mas‐
18       ter.   It  then  removes all other duplicates and places a hardlink for
19       each one pointing to the master file.  This allows for conservation  of
20       disk  space  where  multiple directories on a single filesystem contain
21       many duplicate files.
22
23       Since hard links can only span a single filesystem,  hardlink  is  only
24       useful when all directories specified are on the same filesystem.
25

OPTIONS

27       -c        Compare  only  the contents of the files being considered for
28                 consolidation.  Disregards permission,  ownership  and  other
29                 differences.
30
31       -f        Force hardlinking across file systems.
32
33       -n        Do  not  perform  the consolidation; only print what would be
34                 changed.
35
36       -v        Print summary after hardlinking.
37
38       -vv       Print every hardlinked file and bytes saved. Also print  sum‐
39                 mary after hardlinking.
40
41       -x pattern
42                 Exclude files and directories matching pattern from hardlink‐
43                 ing.
44
45       -h        Show help.
46
47       The optional pattern for excluding files  and  directories  must  be  a
48       PCRE2  compatible  regular expression. Only the basename of the file or
49       directory is checked, not its path. Excluded directories' contents will
50       not be examined.
51

AUTHOR

53       hardlink was written by Jakub Jelinek <jakub@redhat.com>.
54
55       Man page written by Brian Long.
56
57       Man page updated by Jindrich Novy <jnovy@redhat.com>
58

BUGS

60       hardlink  assumes  that  its  target directory trees do not change from
61       under it.  If a directory tree does change, this may result in hardlink
62       accessing  files  and/or  directories outside of the intended directory
63       tree.  Thus, you must avoid running hardlink  on  potentially  changing
64       directory  trees,  and  especially  on directory trees under control of
65       another user.
66
67       Historically  hardlink  silently  excluded  any  names  beginning  with
68       ".in.",  as  well as any names beginning with "." followed by exactly 6
69       other characters. That prior behavior can be achieved by specifying
70       -x '^(\.in\.|\.[^.]{6}$)'
71
72
73
74                                                                   hardlink(1)