hardlinks: does "original" mean anything? man rdfind discusses the rules to decide which file is the original when it finds a duplicate.
When all the others are hard links to the &quot;original,&quot; does that really mean anything?  I thought the actual file was identified by the node, and that each directory/filename just contained the same node.
Is there any significant difference—actually something in the directory entries that can identify afterward which is the original?  (with hard links; obviously symlinks are different)
As far as I know: No, there's no way of telling which is the &quot;original&quot; with hard links.
When rdfind merges multiple files into a single file with multiple hard links, it needs some way to decide which set of timestamps and access rights to keep. Hence the heuristics for deciding which file is the original.