Questions tagged [ln]
ln - Command line tool to create hard links to existing files and soft links to existing and non-existent files.
99
questions
1
vote
1answer
35 views
Is there a way to create a symlink to a non-existent target?
Is there a way to create a symlink whose target does not exist using shell scripts?
From reading man 1 ln, I do not see an option to do so; and even -f checks if the target exists.
Is there a way to ...
0
votes
1answer
54 views
Make a `ln -s` that checks for broken symbolic links
I am trying to write a function ln() (if it is not a good idea to call it ln, it may just be as well called myln() or whatever, but that is not important) in bash, such that,
If the short option -s ...
2
votes
3answers
7k views
How to create a folder symlink that has a different name?
I want to create a symlink
~/.pm2/logs -> /opt/myapp/log
When I run
ln -sFf /opt/myapp/log ~/.pm2/logs
I get a symlink
~/.pm2/logs/log -> /opt/myapp/log
which is not what I want.
I'd ...
0
votes
1answer
29 views
I want to make symlinks of all files in a directory EXCEPT the existing symlinks in the directory
I have a bash script that creates symlinks from the directories in one users directory to another users directory. I want the script to exclude existing symlinks in the source directory when creating ...
0
votes
2answers
134 views
How to regularly update symbolic link (ln -sf) via crontab
Background
The PNG image files I want to use is stored in directories according to date, for example:
/NAS-mein/data/201812/
PNG stored within it like /NAS-mein/data/201812/foo/bar/20181231_1500....
0
votes
1answer
27 views
create symlinks by dropping version number
I have large number of shared libraries like this:
libexpat.so.1.6.7 libqquicklayoutsplugin.so libstdc++.so.6.0.24
libexportlib.so.1.0.0 libqsvg.so ...
4
votes
1answer
955 views
rm to remove a dir, any symlinks, AND symlink destinations? [duplicate]
I have two directories: /all/origins/ & /all/links/.
Everything in links/ points individually to something in origins/, but not everything in origins/ is linked in links/. (Squares, rectangles &...
1
vote
1answer
468 views
unlink delete files which are not links [duplicate]
I created a hard link
$ ln hours.sh hours_link
test it
$ ls -l hours*
-rw-r--r-- 2 me staff 653 Apr 12 2018 hours.sh
-rw-r--r-- 2 me staff 653 Apr 12 2018 hours_link
remove it with unlink
$ ...
5
votes
2answers
484 views
ln: create symlink using another symlink
Let's suppose I have one file and one directory:
$ ls -l
total 4
drwxrwxr-x. 2 user user 4096 Oct 8 09:53 dir
-rw-rw-r--. 1 user user 0 Oct 8 09:53 file
I created a symlink to file called ...
1
vote
1answer
102 views
How to create a link (ln -s) with an absolute path?
So using ln -s to make a link will make either a relative link (link->../file) or an absolute link (link->/home/user/dir1/file).
But sometimes I don't want to type the entire absolute path, but ...
0
votes
2answers
3k views
mkdir -p if final target is symlink
Say we have:
node_modules/
suman/
and node_modules/suman is a symlink
if we do:
mkdir -p "$PWD/node_modules/suman"
I assume mkdir -p will not overrwrite the symlink?
what about if $PWD/...
0
votes
2answers
481 views
What is the meaning of 'ln -sT' in Linux?
To be more precise: I know what the -s options stands for - I use it daily. But I saw someone in a tutorial, who was moving the document root of his website from /var/www/html/project to ~/www/project ...
11
votes
3answers
5k views
Why I can't create a hard link from device file in other than /dev directory?
When I wanted to create a hard link in my /home directory in root mode, Linux showed the following error message:
ln: failed to create hard link ‘my_sdb’ => ‘/dev/sda1’: Invalid cross-device link
...
1
vote
1answer
1k views
Use libgfrotran.so.3 and GFORTRAN_1.0 on fedora 27
I am trying to use fortran code called SAMMY-8 which has its binary ready for use.
I was using without any issue while I had f25 installed. When upgrading to f27 I got the following error when trying ...
1
vote
1answer
238 views
Create hard link if possible, else use symlink
I am trying to write a shell script to create link for file from my dotfiles repo to my home folder.
I want to use hard link if possible because it cannot be broken when moving it to somewhere in ...
1
vote
1answer
98 views
Why can't a project compile with symbol link
I'm working in a team, which develops a c++ (ROS) project.
For some reason, we haven't a good git management.
We have several git branches. To compile the project, I have to git clone the codes from ...
1
vote
1answer
122 views
Paths in ln with hard links and soft links
How does the relative paths work in ln (-s or not)? For example if I type ln -s foo bar/banana.txt what does this mean? What is foo relative to? Because it doesn't seem to be relative to the current ...
0
votes
2answers
44 views
How do I delete all non-link files from a folder in Linux?
I accidentally copied a bunch of junk into /usr/lib .
How do I rm everything in there except folders and link files?
1
vote
1answer
526 views
Multiple symlinks by wildcard: “ln -s ../*/*.txt TXT/”
I'm trying to create multiple symbolic links using wildcard, here the example:
$ ls -R
.:
TXT a b
./TXT:
./a:
a.txt
./b:
b.txt
There is a "parent directoory" containing various subdirs: a, b, ...
1
vote
2answers
29 views
How can I stack wildcards to target specific files?
I want to target all files called fooxxxbarxxx. The common thing among all those files is that it contains foo and bar.
I've tried to use *foo*bar* and *foo**bar* but it doesn't work.
Specifically,...
2
votes
3answers
181 views
Remove symlinks originating from specific directory
I have an "install.sh" that installs my personal scripts:
find /home/Steven -name '*.sh' -exec ln -s -t /usr/local/bin {} +
I would like to make an "uninstall.sh" that removes the symbolic links ...
0
votes
2answers
286 views
Shell script keeps making broken symbolic links
I'm trying to manage my dot files inside a sub directory of $HOME and write a shell script that sets up symbolic links inside $HOME.
#!/bin/sh
for i in .cvsignore .gitconfig .npmrc .tmux.conf ....
0
votes
2answers
988 views
Rm hardlink without removing file/directory itself
Say I create a hardlink with ln x y.
Is there a way to remove the link at y without removing the file at x, after I create the link? It looks like I did a rm -rf on y and it deleted x as well, would ...
-1
votes
2answers
717 views
Making a link using ln -s [duplicate]
I'm trying to make a link using:
ln -s /Backup files/ /link 1
Instead of making the link, I'm get the following output:
ln: target '/link' is not a directory
What am I doing wrong?
2
votes
2answers
193 views
Why can a softlink to a directory be created with or without the trailing slash?
I have found that when creating a symbolic link to a folder it is produced with or without the trailing slash based on your input. for example:
$ ln -sfv /ln-test/FOLDER/ test-tail
test-tail -> /...
2
votes
0answers
571 views
Nested Mount Best Practice
I have two filesystems that need to be mounted on a RedHat system /apps and /apps/label. /apps will have several sub directorates and label will just have files FTP'd to it.
Would it be better to ...
0
votes
1answer
100 views
Problem to install latest version of shellcheck from tar.xz
I have been downloading the latest version of ShellCheck and tried to install it on my System taking the following steps:
I downloded shellcheck-latest.linux.x86_64.tar.xz
then I run as root:
# ...
8
votes
2answers
2k views
Why can't I create a `hardlink` to a file from a “mount --bind” directory on the same filesystem?
Original Problem
I have a file on one filesystem: /data/src/file
and I want to hard link it to: /home/user/proj/src/file
but /home is on one disk, and /data is on another so I get an error:
$ cd /...
0
votes
1answer
381 views
how do i link one directory to another directory so that FTP or SMB share can still use that directory
Needing to link a SMB share directory to a empty directory with a FTP share. There is a empty directory inside of FTP_Share1 called smbshare which I am trying to link to SMB_Share1 to access all of ...
1
vote
2answers
92 views
Why Does `'ln -s /directory 'D:'` Work Like It Does?
So, as mentioned here, 'ln -s /directory 'D:' maps the windows D: location to a Linux style directory.
However, as far as I know, this goes against the Linux naming system. Why does Linux allow the ...
1
vote
1answer
59 views
ln -s reports that a procedure failed, but creates symlinks nonetheless
I am in the parent directory and there are a number of files with .fastq, .fq, .fastq.gz and .fq.gz extensions in different subdirectories. I created a subdirectory named FASTQC and want to create ...
2
votes
1answer
100 views
Inconsistent behaviour creating symbolic links with relative and force flag
I have an issue with creating symbolic links with ln, with the relative and the force flag set.
The scenario is as follows:
$ tree
.
├── folder1
│ └── file
└── folder2
I create the link:
$ ln -...
5
votes
2answers
2k views
Size of symlink
Symbolic links do take room, of course, but just the room it takes to store
the name and target plus a few bytes for other metadata
Do symbolic links actually make a difference in disk usage?
My ...
7
votes
1answer
6k views
How to force creation of a symbolic link?
I have a particular directory full of other directories organized (named) by date. For ease of reference, I have a symlink called current pointing to the latest one.
In the script that creates new ...
1
vote
2answers
387 views
Symbolic link directories redirects to itself
I created a symbolic link to OneDrive using the following
ln -s ~/in_between_directories/OneDrive/ ./onedrive
When I cd into onedrive from my working directory it correctly displays the directories ...
1
vote
1answer
461 views
create symlink with ln but a loop will be created
I would like to create a symlink from my source:
/nfs/www/example.com/sourcefolder
to this destination:
/var/www/example.com/destinationfolder
So I run this command:
ln -s /nfs/www/example.com/...
2
votes
2answers
512 views
Best workaround for file's symbolic link with different group than file
Target situation:
data/file.txt owned by myUser:myUser and "-rw-rw-rw-" (chmod 666)
symbolic link /tmp/file.txt owned by postgres:postgres and "-rw-rw-rw-"
So, I can edit the file with my user, and ...
3
votes
1answer
212 views
Keeping dotfiles in sync for different folders
I am using Dropbox for storing my dotfiles from which I create soft links to my home directory. For configuration files which I do edit by myself it works very good, however applications like firefox ...
4
votes
2answers
1k views
Symbolic link with option
Is it possible to create a symbolic link to an executable that executes it with a certain option/argument?
I know a workaround would be to create a bash script in one of the PATH directories but can ...
0
votes
1answer
177 views
Is existing file removed when a symlink is created with the same name?
So there was a file dummy1. I created a symlink:
ln -snf dummy dummy1
and confused source and target file, as I actually wanted dummy to point to dummy1 not vice versa.
So now dummy1 is a symlink.
...
0
votes
1answer
65 views
'ln' doesn't behave the same when executed in a script [closed]
I'm trying to install Guacamole through a script. When it comes to link the files stored in /etc/guacamole to tomcat8 directory, the following line works well when executed in the shell :
ln -s /etc/...
1
vote
0answers
67 views
Why root lose permission of 1st and 2nd level symlink? [duplicate]
Why root lose permission to run 1st level symlink /bin/planet and 2nd level symlink /tmp/earth, except symlink target /tmp/sun at the end ? Instead ordinary user no problem to run 3 of them:
xiaobai@...
2
votes
1answer
165 views
Is it possible to create such a soft link?
I created a soft link with following command:
ln -s "/media/Eric/node/language/1-1.English/space@English/7-2 IELTS" ~/desktop/IELTS
On my desktop, when click to open the IELTS dir, the path is /home/...
1
vote
1answer
246 views
advantages of hard-link of file over copy of the file
I have a Bourne shell script which accepts single argument(text-file usually few KB in size). Essentially this script is a wrapper for scp which copies this text-file to remote server. Script does not ...
3
votes
2answers
691 views
cp overwriting without overwriting hardlinks to destination
Say I have the following setup :
$ cat fileA
textA
$ cat fileB
textB
$ ln fileA myLink
$ cat myLink # as expected
textA
I do not understand the following behaviour :
$ cp fileB fileA
$ cat myLink #...
6
votes
2answers
3k views
What is the difference between the link and ln commands?
From the man pages:
ln - make links between files
and
link - call the link function to create a link to a file
These seem to do the same thing however ln takes a lot of options as well.
Is link ...
1
vote
1answer
400 views
Why ln -s copied a file instead of linking it?
Please see the screenshot.
For two times I have run ln -s and it creates a copy of a small text file instead of linking it.
The exact command I have run is:
lobianco@lobianco-officeLaptopLatitude:~/...
-2
votes
1answer
304 views
Does this example implement the same as `ln -sr`?
From coreutils' manual about ln
-r --relative
Make symbolic links relative to the link location.
Example:
ln -srv /a/file /tmp
’/tmp/file’ -> ’../a/file’
Relative symbolic ...
1
vote
4answers
1k views
Why change the current directory to the parent directory of a relative symlink before creating it
From the manual of coreutils, for ln
When creating a relative symlink in a different location than the
current directory, the resolution of the symlink will be different
than the resolution of ...
5
votes
2answers
5k views
Does `ln -sf` overwrite existing files which are only symbolic links
From the coreutils ln manual:
Normally ln does not remove existing files. Use the --force (-f) option to remove them
unconditionally, the --interactive (-i) option to remove them conditionally,
...
