BackgroundI am working on a RHEL 5 cluster. I want my Fortran program to read the file /home/bob/inputs/input_1I asked Bob to give me permission to read all contents of inputs:[bob@server]$ chmod -R a+r /home/bob/inputs/*I linked these to a shared directory:[david@server]$ ln -s /home/bob/inputs/ /home/share/inputs/My (Fortran) program tried to read /home/share/inputs/input_1 and said:File /home/share/inputs/input_1 not found!I tried to locate the file myself (in the process, bob gave a+rwx permissions):[david@server]$ls -ltrh /home/share/inputs/input_1lrwxrwxrwx 1 bob bob 33 Oct 25 15:42 /home/share/inputs/input_1 -> /home/bob/inputs/input_1From this, I concluded that a) inputs_1 exists and b) all users have rwx permission. I tried to read it:[david@server]$ more /home/share/inputs/input_1 /home/share/inputs/input_1: No such file or directoryAnd am told that it does not exist.I look for the target file /home/bob/inputs/input_1 but am denied permission.[david@server]$ls -ltrh /home/bob/inputs/input_1ls: /home/bob/inputs/input_1 Permission deniedSomething bizzare happens if I ls the directory contents:[david@server]$ls -ltrh /home/bob/inputs/?--------- ? ? ? ?            ? input_1?--------- ? ? ? ?            ? input_2?--------- ? ? ? ?            ? input_3... (n-4 lines omitted) ?--------- ? ? ? ?            ? input_nalthough if bob does this, he gets:-rwxrwxrwx 1 bob bob  269 May 24  input_1... (n-2 lines omitted) -rwxrwxrwx 1 bob bob 2.0K Jan 19  input_nQuestions:Is there a simple explanation for this apparently (to me) inconsistent behavior?Where do I go from here?
Why is bash giving me (apparently) conflicting information about a file?
permissions;directory;ls;symlink
You need execute permissions on /home/bob/inputs. You can set it with:chmod a+x /home/bob/inputs