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7.6.1.3 Usar enlaces simbólicos para bases de datos en Windows »
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7.6.1.2. Utilización de enlaces simbólicos para tablas en Unix

You should not symlink tables on systems that do not have a fully operational realpath() call. (Linux and Solaris support realpath()). You can check whether your system supports symbolic links by issuing a SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'have_symlink' statement.

In MySQL 5.0, symlinks are fully supported only for MyISAM tables. For other table types, you may get strange problems if you try to use symbolic links on files in the operating system with any of the preceding statements.

The handling of symbolic links for MyISAM tables in MySQL 5.0 works the following way:

  • In the data directory, you always have the table definition file, the data file, and the index file. The data file and index file can be moved elsewhere and replaced in the data directory by symlinks. The definition file cannot.

  • You can symlink the data file and the index file independently to different directories.

  • Symlinking can be accomplished manually from the command line using ln -s if mysqld is not running. Aternativly, you can instruct a running MySQL server to perform the symlinking by using the DATA DIRECTORY and INDEX DIRECTORY options to CREATE TABLE. See Sección 13.1.5, “Sintaxis de CREATE TABLE”.

  • myisamchk does not replace a symlink with the data file or index file. It works directly on the file to which the symlink points. Any temporary files are created in the directory where the data file or index file is located.

  • Note: When you drop a table that is using symlinks, both the symlink and the file to which the symlink points are dropped. This is an extremely good reason why you should not run mysqld as the system root or allow system users to have write access to MySQL database directories.

  • If you rename a table with ALTER TABLE ... RENAME and you do not move the table to another database, the symlinks in the database directory are renamed to the new names and the data file and index file are renamed accordingly.

  • If you use ALTER TABLE ... RENAME to move a table to another database, the table is moved to the other database directory. The old symlinks and the files to which they pointed are deleted. In other words, the new table is not symlinked.

  • If you are not using symlinks, you should use the --skip-symbolic-links option to mysqld to ensure that no one can use mysqld to drop or rename a file outside of the data directory.

Table symlink operations that are not yet supported:

  • ALTER TABLE ignores the DATA DIRECTORY and INDEX DIRECTORY table options.

  • BACKUP TABLE and RESTORE TABLE don't respect symbolic links.

  • The .frm file must never be a symbolic link (as indicated previously, only the data and index files can be symbolic links). Attempting to do this (for example, to make synonyms) produces incorrect results. Suppose that you have a database db1 under the MySQL data directory, a table tbl1 in this database, and in the db1 directory you make a symlink tbl2 that points to tbl1: 

    shell> cd /path/to/datadir/db1
shell> ln -s tbl1.frm tbl2.frm
shell> ln -s tbl1.MYD tbl2.MYD
shell> ln -s tbl1.MYI tbl2.MYI

    Problems result if one thread reads db1.tbl1 and another thread updates db1.tbl2:

    • The query cache is “fooled” (it has no way of knowing that tbl1 has not been updated, so it returns outdated results).

    • ALTER statements on tbl2 also fail.

Ésta es una traducción del manual de referencia de MySQL, que puede encontrarse en dev.mysql.com. El manual de referencia original de MySQL está escrito en inglés, y esta traducción no necesariamente está tan actualizada como la versión original. Para cualquier sugerencia sobre la traducción y para señalar errores de cualquier tipo, no dude en dirigirse a mysql-es@vespito.com.