Introduction

As a Linux administrator, you often have to work with files, folders, symlinks, etc. And sometimes you need to know more information about individual elements in a path for example file type, owner, …

For that matter, the namei command appeared. Now we’re gonna teach you to use the namei command in Linux.

The syntax of the namei command

The syntax:

namei [options] pathname...
Code language: CSS (css)

For example:

$ namei test/test1.txt

Output:

f: the path name

d: directory

-: the file name

Short description

DESCRIPTION         top

       <strong>namei </strong>interprets its arguments as pathnames to any type of Unix
       file (symlinks, files, directories, and so forth). <strong>namei </strong>then
       follows each pathname until an endpoint is found (a file, a
       directory, a device node, etc). If it finds a symbolic link, it
       shows the link, and starts following it, indenting the output to
       show the context.

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

       For each line of output, <strong>namei </strong>uses the following characters to
       identify the file type found:

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

       <strong>namei </strong>prints an informative message when the maximum number of
       symbolic links this system can have has been exceeded.
Code language: HTML, XML (xml)

Using the namei command

1. Align to the left margin (using -v option)

$ namei -v test/test1.txt

Output:

2. Show owner and group (using -o option)

$ namei -o test/test1.txt

Output:

This proves that this folder and file are both owned by ubuntu.

3. Show long list (using -l option)

$ namei -l test/test1.txt

Output:

With this option, it will show more privileges of the owner.

If you only want to show the privileges of the owner, let’s use the -m option:

$ namei -m test/test1.txt

Output:

Conclusion

We just taught you to use the namei command in Linux.

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