This page describes how to create a symbolic link in linux

For example, I want to create a symbolic link in my /usr/local directory called mysql that symbolically links to /usr/local/mysql-standard-4.0.18-pc-linux-i686

Here is what I do:

shell> cd /usr/local
shell> ln -s /usr/local/mysql-standard-4.0.18-pc-linux-i686 mysql
shell> ls -l mysql
shell> lrwxrwxrwx    1 mysql    mysql          46 May 30 13:59 mysql -> /usr/local/mysql-standard-4.0.18-pc-linux-i686

The last two commands are just to demonstrate that the link was created. Do a directory listing with ls -l mysql and then you can see that now there is a link mysql that points to the directory /usr/local/mysql-standard-4.0.18-pc-linux-i686.