Hello.

I am wondering if it's possible to create hardlinks within an Ubuntu VM I have running on unraid, specifically hardlinks to a share i've mounted in the vm with virtiofs?
e.g. hard linking /mnt/unraid_share/folder1/file.jpg --> /mnt/unraid_share/folder2/other_file.jpg. My use case has the hardlinks always staying in the same mount point, not hardlinking from my mounted unraid share to local vm disk.

I couldn't find much info about this use case online.

Yes, virtiofs supports hard links within the mounted share. For your example, run this inside Ubuntu:

ln /mnt/unraid_share/folder1/file.jpg /mnt/unraid_share/folder2/other_file.jpg

The destination directory must already exist, and other_file.jpg must be a new name. You also need suitable permissions.

The main restriction is that both names must refer to a file on the same underlying filesystem. An Unraid user share can combine multiple disks, so one mount point in Ubuntu does not remove that restriction.

You can check the result with:

stat -c 'device=%d inode=%i links=%h %n' /mnt/unraid_share/folder1/file.jpg /mnt/unraid_share/folder2/other_file.jpg

Both should show the same device and inode numbers, with a link count of at least two. These are two names for the same file, so edits through either name affect the same data.

If ln fails, please post the exact error, your Unraid version, and the host directory exported through virtiofs.