Manual: namei

NAMEI(1)						User Commands						    NAMEI(1)

NAME
       namei - follow a pathname until a terminal point is found

SYNOPSIS
       namei [options] pathname...

DESCRIPTION
       namei interprets its arguments as pathnames to any type of Unix file (symlinks, files, directories, and so forth).
       namei 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, namei 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

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

OPTIONS
       -l, --long
	   Use the 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'.

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

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

       -v, --vertical
	   Vertically align the modes and owners.

       -x, --mountpoints
	   Show mountpoint directories with a 'D' rather than a 'd'.

       -Z, --context
	   Show security context of the file or "?" if not available. The support for security contexts is optional and does
	   not have to be compiled to the namei binary.

       -h, --help
	   Display help text and exit.

       -V, --version
	   Display version and exit.

BUGS
       To be discovered.

AUTHORS
       The original namei program was written by Roger Southwick .

       The program was rewritten by Karel Zak .

SEE ALSO
       ls(1), stat(1), symlink(7)

REPORTING BUGS
       For bug reports, use the issue tracker .

AVAILABILITY
       The namei command is part of the util-linux package which can be downloaded from Linux Kernel Archive
       .

util-linux 2.41.3					 2025-12-15						    NAMEI(1)