How to alias or rename a file on the fly in Linux?

Question

I have the following challenge under Linux:

• An application is writing a config-file "samename.cfg" into certain directories
• I want to have the config-file named different for each directory
• I do not want any file called "samename.cfg" written to the directories
• I can not change it in the application

So I would like to have the application thinking that it accesses samename.cfg but in fact it reads and writes anothername.cfg. Symlink does not help, because then there still is a file called samename.cfg in every directory.

Anybody any idea?

Regards, Axel

Answer 1

Try using a hard link instead of a soft link when using ln command (just remove the -s flag).

See ln man's page for more details.