NAMEI(1)

💖 NAMEI 💖

okay so bestie, welcome to namei — a lil User Commands baddie from section 1 of the manual, and she is literally here to follow a pathname until a terminal point is found. yes queen. let's go ✨

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🌸 NAME 🌸

namei — follow a pathname until a terminal point is found 🎀

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🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

namei [options] pathname...

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

so namei takes its arguments and treats them as pathnames pointing at any type of Unix file — symlinks, files, directories, all of it, the whole buffet 🍓. then it follows each pathname until an endpoint shows up (a file, a directory, a device node, etc). and if it bumps into a symbolic link? it shows you the link, then starts following it, indenting the output so you can see the context. main character behavior honestly.

this program is useful for finding "too many levels of symbolic links" problems. like when your symlink situation is giving infinite loop energy 💀.

for each line of output, namei uses these characters to identify the file type it 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

and when the maximum number of symbolic links this system can have has been exceeded, namei prints an informative message. she's polite about it 🫶.

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👑 OPTIONS 👑

• -l, --long — use the long listing format (same as -m -o -v). the "give me everything" button fr fr 💅
• -m, --modes — show the mode bits of each file type in the style of ls(1), for example 'rwxr-xr-x'. permission glow-up ✨
• -n, --nosymlinks — Don't follow symlinks. boundaries, bestie 🎀
• -o, --owners — show owner and group name of each file. who is she 👀
• -v, --vertical — vertically align the modes and owners. aesthetic alignment, no cap 🌈
• -x, --mountpoints — show mountpoint directories with a 'D' rather than a 'd'. capital D for drama 👑
• -Z, --context — show security context of the file or "?" if not available. > heads up bestie: the support for security contexts is optional and does not have to be compiled to the namei binary. so if it's not there, it's not you, it's the build 🙈
• -h, --help — display help text and exit. the "explain pls" flag 💖
• -V, --version — display version and exit. her little birth certificate 📜

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💀 BUGS 💀

To be discovered.

(yeah. that's it. iconic, honestly. she's flawless until proven otherwise ✨)

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🫶 AUTHORS 🫶

the original namei program was written by Roger Southwick <rogers@amadeus.wr.tek.com>.

the program was rewritten by Karel Zak <kzak@redhat.com>. two icons, one legacy 💜

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🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

ls(1), stat(1), symlink(7)

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🐛 REPORTING BUGS 🐛

for bug reports, use the issue tracker <https://github.com/util-linux/util-linux/issues>. tell her what's wrong, she can take it 🎀

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⭐ 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/>. go get her 👑

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and that's the whole page bestie!! this was util-linux version 2.42.4, dated 2026-09-21, and it's the NAMEI(1) manual page — slay, periodt 💅✨🦋