namei - Man Page

follow a pathname until a terminal point is found

Examples (TL;DR)

Resolve the pathnames specified as the argument parameters: namei path/to/a path/to/b path/to/c
Display the results in a long-listing format: namei [-l|--long] path/to/a path/to/b path/to/c
Show the mode bits of each file type in the style of ls: namei [-m|--modes] path/to/a path/to/b path/to/c
Show owner and group name of each file: namei [-o|--owners] path/to/a path/to/b path/to/c
Don't follow symlinks while resolving: namei [-n|--nosymlinks] path/to/a path/to/b path/to/c

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.