Any way of hard-linking directories?

[naxcitl]

Hi, I'm wanting to get an ftp server up and running, and all users will be chrooted. I do, however, want some directories to be shared between users.

I can't use symbolic links for this because they will not work pointing to directories outside the chroot jail. I thought using hard links was to be the solution but Ubuntu does not appear to allow it. I tried: ln -d /path/to/directory as the superuser but it still wouldn't let me.

Is there any way of enabling hard links to directories? If not, is there an alternative?

I'm using Ubuntu 6.06.1 (Dapper) Server Edition, with the ext3 filesystem.

[TheDom]

I did this by creating an appropriate directory in the user's home dirs and then "mount --bind /var/www/shared /home/user/shared". :)

[steve.horsley]

You could try:
ln -d /path/to/directory linkname
but man ln is discouraging.

I really like the mount --bind idea. I didn't know that was possible.

[naxcitl]

Thanks for the replies, the mount --bind method did the job!

Although I can't help wondering if there is some setting somewhere in /etc which could be changed to allow hardlinking of directories...