# namei

## 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.
    


## AVAILABILITY



           The **namei** command is part of the util-linux package which can be
           downloaded from Linux Kernel Archive
           <https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/>. This page is
           part of the _util-linux_ (a random collection of Linux utilities)
           project. Information about the project can be found at 
           ⟨https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/⟩. If you have a
           bug report for this manual page, send it to
           util-linux@vger.kernel.org. This page was obtained from the
           project's upstream Git repository
           ⟨git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/utils/util-linux/util-linux.git⟩ on
           2025-08-11. (At that time, the date of the most recent commit that
           was found in the repository was 2025-08-05.) If you discover any
           rendering problems in this HTML version of the page, or you
           believe there is a better or more up-to-date source for the page,
           or you have corrections or improvements to the information in this
           COLOPHON (which is _not_ part of the original manual page), send a
           mail to man-pages@man7.org
    
    util-linux 2.42-start-521-ec46  2025-01-16                       _NAMEI_(1)
    


* * *