Questions tagged [symlink]
symbolic link, a type of file that is a reference to another file or folder
210
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15
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How to change the backup location of multiple iOS devices using symlink?
This article outline the steps to take in order to move your iPhone or iPad backups to an external hard drive...
https://www.imore.com/how-move-your-iphone-or-ipad-backups-external-hard-drive
What I'm ...
- 131
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0
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56
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Delete Symlink from ~/Desktop
A while ago I deleted my ~/Desktop directory and then (using a symlink) pointed it to another directory (a subdirectory of my Google Drive directory). No, that my setup has changed, I would like to ...
- 101
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12
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Create symlink in root directory / [duplicate]
I want to create a symlink in macOS root directory /.
But
sudo ln -s /path/to/directory /short
just outputs ln: /short: Read-only file system (see here).
Is there a solution to bypass this and create ...
- 201
1
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1
answer
53
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What is the purpose of pythonwrapper, and how can I distinguish it from an executable Python interpreter?
I have a Bourne script that takes a Python command (Python interpreter and arguments) and reroutes it to a custom Python interpreter. I want to make sure that modules that would be on the path of the ...
- 111
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1
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27
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How can I ensure photo folders are synced to iPhone in correct time order?
I'm syncing some local folders so they appear as albums "From my Mac" in my iPhone Photos app. It works, but the ordering is wrong.
The files in the local folders are actually symlinks into ...
- 111
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0
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22
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How to make iCloud Drive conveniently available to the shell
For whatever reason, Apple has decided to make "iCloud Drive" actually available at an impossible-to-remember and painful-to-type location.
Is there any better method than a symlink to make ...
- 7,220
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1
answer
58
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How can I find out which file(s) links to another file
This is a question about the reverse of a file link, which I can easily see in either Terminal or Get Info, ie. this
lrwxr-xr-x 1 Alex admin 35 7 Aug 23:35 envsubst -> ../Cellar/gettext/...
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1
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91
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ln symbolic link command error - iphone bu symbolic link troubleshoot
Having problem changing iphone backup location (following this tutorial https://www.iclarified.com/72786/how-to-change-your-iphone-backup-location-mac)
cannot interpret the error - any help ...
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2
answers
58
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How do I get my documents folder back from an external drive?
A while ago, I moved my Documents folder to my external drive to save space on my mac using this tutorial:
Open Terminal
Type in
cd /Users/Your User ID/
Then
ln -s /Volumes/External Drive Name/...
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0
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2
answers
3k
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Homebrew suggests there's always an existing formula for node installed?
I am trying to install node to use with reactjs. I started with node 16 but found it was incompatible with node-sass, so I've downgraded to node 14.
When installing (brew install node@14), it remains ...
- 238
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1
answer
344
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Allow symbolic links in SMB file sharing
I symlink directories I want to share into ~/Base/shared. I have enabled File Sharing (via SMB) on this directory, but symlinks are shown just as links and are not followed to their target (you can ...
- 443
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2
answers
1k
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macOS Cannot Create Valid Symlink From Terminal Using Relative Paths
Using the following snippet it creates an invalid symlink. But according to other answers it should work fine.
# make a temp dir and save path to var.
# set dir (mktemp -d) # fish shell only!
dir=$(...
- 914
0
votes
1
answer
50
views
Is there a way to view just symbolic links that I've created?
I've noticed my iCloud storage is full even though I only have roughly ~2GB of data in there. When I view my iCloud storage I notice that both my desktop and my documents seem to be listed twice - ...
- 429
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103
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Replace symbolic links to libraries in executable with full path
Because I use homebrew to manage my packages but I compile ffmpeg by myself (I need to enable some components that is not included in the homebrew build), when homebrew upgrades one of its formulas ...
- 1,733
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0
answers
36
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Fixing symlinked /Users directory
I had my previous Mac Mini configured where /Users was a link to a separate volume on my dual disk system. I tried upgrading to Catalina on that machine and discovered that this link caused the ...
- 188
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1
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345
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What casues macOS sidebar to drop "favorites" (shortcuts to linked files/directories), other than macOS updates? How to prevent?
Every month or so my Macs drops all the favorites I have in the Finder windows (which also appear in Save/Open system dialogue windows). I takes time to redo them, and it is frustrating.
I know that ...
- 336
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0
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27
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How do I publish symlinks as regular files over SMB3? [duplicate]
I have this file that's dropped in a Mac via rsync, then Windows fetches it but it needs it to be named differently according to use, so the obvious answer, I thought, was to symlink it into all of ...
- 163
1
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1
answer
65
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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 "original," does that really mean anything? I ...
- 3,355
1
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0
answers
40
views
How to create device file symlink
ok - bit convoluted, but I'm creating a tool that emulates a GPS device. Combination of C code and a tool called SOCAT. SOCAT reads a udp port and passes the data to my C Code which decodes the data ...
- 111
1
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1
answer
74
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Strange behaviour of symlink /var
I have a pretty new MacBook and got this from our central IT department pre-installed.
I experienced a problem, which I first thought was related to Terraform, but after investigation this seems to be ...
- 111
1
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1
answer
170
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Any way to make symlinks or aliases resolve over a network with macOS?
So I like to move my big folders from the home folder on the macOS System SSD to a hard drive and keep the SSD mainly for the system files and apps, a fairly common practice.
Problem is when I want to ...
- 11
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1
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55
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Create a symlink pointing to a variable filepath
I am using MacVim installed via homebrew. The absolute path to the app is /usr/local/Cellar/macvim/xxxxxx/MacVim.app, with xxxxxx the version number. MacVim version number is updated often.
Now I ...
- 121
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1
answer
35
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Trying to create a symbolic link in OS 10.14.6
I'm trying to install a symbolic link but when I enter the command I think should work ("sudo ln -s /Applications/harris/idl87/lib/xop/xop2.4/xop /usr/local/bin/xop"), I get no response at all. ????
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96
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Under Catalina, should I use HFS+ or APFS when symlinking media folders to external drive
As I'm planning to install an SSD into my iMac with smaller capacity than the internal Fusion Drive its replacing, I will need to symlink my Movies, Music and Pictures folders to an external mains ...
- 740
-1
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2
answers
177
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How to properly symlink files in the ~/Library/Preferences
Many apps store their settings in a file under ~/Library/Preferences. I want to version these files in my dotfiles repo. I like my dotfiles repo to be in its own tidy folder so my general approach to ...
- 245
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0
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349
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nvm (node version manager) nvm,node,npm not found
I did install nvm regarding the documentation, then installed the latest LTS node, nvm install 12.16.1 and globally installed yarn.
everything was working well, the node -v and npm -v and which node ...
- 131
3
votes
1
answer
351
views
Is there a GUI difftool that does symlinks?
Let's say I have some directories with symlinks in them.
.
├── dirA
│ ├── file013
│ └── file212
└── dirB
├── file013
└── file212
2 directories, 4 files
The symlinks are pointing to ...
- 810
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1
answer
253
views
How to create a custom readable symlink out of a sandboxed container?
How do I create a readable symlink from within a ~/Library/Containers/.../Data/ app folder to a file outside?
It seems that due to the macOS sandboxing mechanism, this doesn't work out of the box. ...
- 101
1
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0
answers
100
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Mailbox set as read-only when symlinking from an external storage
I have multiple mailboxes and I want to save space by moving some of them in an external storage. I'd like to still be able to view the email using Mail.app even if said mailbox is now located in an ...
- 11
0
votes
1
answer
901
views
Any better way to move app library path to external drive than using symbolic link?
I am running MacOS 10.14.5. I used symbolic links a lot to free up my internal drive. My internal drive is almost full and I need to free up some spaces again. Normally, the symbolic links solution ...
- 1,685
1
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1
answer
270
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MacOS Mail cannot access folders on external drive via symlinks
My 2012 Mac Mini is running High Sierra, and I have copied older mail folders to a partition of an external drive. In the User mail folder, I then placed symlinks. In Finder, the symlinks show the ...
- 41
1
vote
3
answers
323
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Symlinked Dotfiles Are Not Working
I'm on macOS Catalina and I'm trying to move all my "dotfiles" into a folder, where I can place them under version control, then symlink them back into the home folder. I've created a hidden "....
- 729
0
votes
2
answers
45
views
Organizing Favourites in Finder with Symlinks and colons
On my machine I have repeating patterns of directories.
E.g,:
notes/2019-01
records/expenses/2019-01
records/taxes/2019-01
customer/project/notes/2019-01
Links in the Favourites bar show up as:
...
- 384
2
votes
2
answers
1k
views
Copy directory structure and symlink files (alternative to `cp -as`)
I'm looking for how to recursively copy a directory structure and then fill the copy with symlinks to the corresponding files from the source directory. This has a simple solution in Linux in the form ...
- 1,599
0
votes
1
answer
41
views
Unexpected behavior of bash script used to sync dotfiles
I'm using essentially this script for keeping my dotfiles under version control. I recently added a snippets folder inside my emacs.d directory and listed it as one of the things that should be ...
- 373
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1
answer
296
views
Why is ~/Documents a symlink to itself, and how should this be fixed?
I'm a programmer diagnosing a customer's issue with our software. We're having some problems writing into the user's Documents folder in macOS Mojave 10.14.6.*
It turns out that the customer's ~/...
- 317
13
votes
4
answers
18k
views
Relocating /Users folder in MacOS 10.15 (Catalina)?
In the past when we wanted to offload the /Users folder from the internal disk we simply created a symbolic link for /Users that pointed to /Volumes/External_Drive_Name/Users. The Mac in question is a ...
- 16.5k
2
votes
1
answer
3k
views
Permission denied for ls -l in a folder with symlinks
I have a folder hierarchy
parent_folder -> inner_folder -> innermost_folder
The steps I followed are (as a sudo user):
created a symlink pointing to parent_folder
set the permissions of the ...
- 21
1
vote
1
answer
29
views
Turning on FileVault with a symlinked directory
Running Mojave (10.14.6). There's not enough room on my SSD for my Music, Pictures, and Movies. I have those on an external drive. I have not yet turned on FileVault. If I create symlinks for those ...
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1
answer
390
views
On Catalina, what should /private/tmp look like?
This is my /tmp and /private:
# ls -lA /tmp /private/
lrwxr-xr-x@ 1 root admin 11 Oct 18 18:48 /tmp -> private/tmp
/private/:
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 121 root wheel 3872 Oct 21 13:27 etc
drwxr-xr-...
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2
answers
79
views
How to remove symlinks created after a specific date?
Say I did a
ln -s /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/SDKs/MacOSX.sdk/usr/include/* /usr/local/include/
Now I regret it. How can I delete all these links? The good news is I created them today, so ...
- 569
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0
answers
2k
views
ld: library not found for -lSystem
New to Mac. I am going to install a software and running make, returns the error:
$ make
gcc -I/Users/username/softwarename/include -I/opt/local/include/glib-2.0 -I/opt/local/lib/glib-2.0/include -I/...
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0
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32
views
After upgrade to 10.15 Cataline /media folder is gone
Previously I had used /media to mount remote filesystems.. after upgrading today I find that the directory is gone and / is read only. Is there a workaround for this? The filesystem I had mounted ...
- 11
5
votes
4
answers
3k
views
Sync Desktop now that Dropbox no longer supports symlinks
How can I have my Desktop sync over Dropbox?
Previously, I used symlinks to have Dropbox sync the Desktop and Documents folders while keeping them in their actual locations. Dropbox no longer ...
- 348
2
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2
answers
526
views
How can I change the default Documents and Pictures directories to symlinks?
I have most of my important files under Dropbox, like Pictures and Documents. It would be great if I could set the default Documents and Pictures directories to either point under the respective ...
- 123
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1
answer
291
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Symlinks became files, containing relative paths, within an app bundle, why? How to fix?
I discovered an interesting form of corruption within some application bundles which had been stored on a file server for months and years.
The application bundles were installers for various macOS ...
- 813
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1
answer
91
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How to move Photos Library and associated iPhotos Library to another drive without breaking links?
I wish to move my Photos Library to a secondary drive, both formatted with APFS. I still have the iPhotos Library from where the pictures were imported.
I'm concerned that when moving the Photos and ...
- 1,859
2
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0
answers
1k
views
Network drive in finder sidebar disappears, is there's a way keep them in unmounted state?
I use Automator to mount my network drives on boot by following instructions from this link:
http://osxdaily.com/2012/05/04/automatically-connect-to-network-drive-mac-os-x/
and then drag the drives ...
- 21
0
votes
1
answer
200
views
Show original shortcut in MacOS 10.14
I often make symbolic links of folders. I recently had to change my laptop and move from Sierra to Mojave.
In the old OS I used to type Cmd + R to go to the original folder. This seems to no longer ...
- 345
3
votes
3
answers
411
views
Why have symbolic links between files in folders at same depth?
I noticed that in macOS, the /usr/local/Cellar folder contains binaries installed using Homebrew, and that /usr/local/opt has symbolic links to a bunch of those binaries. I haven't used symbolic links ...
- 389