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NAME

       namei - follow a pathname until a terminal point is found

SYNOPSIS

       namei [options] pathname...

DESCRIPTION

       Namei  uses  its  arguments  as  pathnames  to  any  type  of Unix file
       (symlinks, files, directories, and so forth).  Namei then follows  each
       pathname  until  a  terminal  point  is  found (a file, directory, char
       device, etc).  If it finds a symbolic link, we show the link, and start
       following it, indenting the output to show the context.

       This  program  is  useful  for  finding  a "too many levels of symbolic
       links" problems.

       For each line output, namei  outputs  a  the  following  characters  to
       identify the file types found:

          f: = the pathname we are currently trying to resolve
           d = directory
           l = symbolic link (both the link and it’s contents are output)
           s = socket
           b = block device
           c = character device
           p = FIFO (named pipe)
           - = regular file
           ? = an error of some kind

       Namei prints an informative message when the maximum number of symbolic
       links this system can have has been exceeded.

OPTIONS

       -l, --long
              Use a long listing format (same as -m -o -v).

       -m, --modes
              Show the mode bits of each file type in the style of ls(1),  for
              example ’rwxr-xr-x’.

       -o, --owners
              Show owner and group name of each file.

       -n, --nosymlinks
              Don’t follow symlinks.

       -v, --vertical
              Vertical align of modes and owners.

       -x, --mountpoints
              Show mount point directories with a ’D’, rather than a ’d’.

AUTHOR

       The   original   namei   program   was   written   by  Roger  Southwick
       <rogers@amadeus.wr.tek.com>.

       The program was re-written by Karel Zak <kzak@redhat.com>.

BUGS

       To be discovered.

SEE ALSO

       ls(1), stat(1)

AVAILABILITY

       The namei command is part of the util-linux-ng package and is available
       from ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux-ng/.

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