1SYMLINKS(8)                 System Manager's Manual                SYMLINKS(8)
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NAME

6       symlinks - symbolic link maintenance utility
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SYNOPSIS

9       symlinks [ -cdorstv ] dirlist
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DESCRIPTION

12       symlinks  is a useful utility for maintainers of FTP sites, CDROMs, and
13       Linux software distributions.  It scans directories for symbolic  links
14       and lists them on stdout, often revealing flaws in the filesystem tree.
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16       Each  link  is output with a classification of relative, absolute, dan‐
17       gling, messy, lengthy, or other_fs.
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19       relative links are those expressed as paths relative to  the  directory
20       in  which  the  links reside, usually independent of the mount point of
21       the filesystem.
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23       absolute links are those given as an absolute path from the root direc‐
24       tory as indicated by a leading slash (/).
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26       dangling links are those for which the target of the link does not cur‐
27       rently exist.  This commonly occurs for absolute links when a  filesys‐
28       tem  is  mounted  at other than its customary mount point (such as when
29       the normal root filesystem is mounted at /mnt after booting from alter‐
30       native media).
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32       messy  links are links which contain unnecessary slashes or dots in the
33       path.  These are cleaned up as well when -c is specified.
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35       lengthy links are links which use "../" more than necessary in the path
36       (eg.   /bin/vi -> ../bin/vim) These are only detected when -s is speci‐
37       fied, and are only cleaned up when -c is also specified.
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39       other_fs are those links whose target currently resides on a  different
40       filesystem from where symlinks was run (most useful with -r ).
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OPTIONS

43       -c     convert  absolute links (within the same filesystem) to relative
44              links.  This permits links to maintain their validity regardless
45              of  the mount point used for the filesystem -- a desirable setup
46              in most cases.  This option also causes any messy  links  to  be
47              cleaned  up,  and,  if -s was also specified, then lengthy links
48              are also shortened.  Links affected  by  -c  are  prefixed  with
49              changed in the output.
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51       -d     causes dangling links to be removed.
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53       -o     fix  links  on  other  filesystems  encountered while recursing.
54              Normally, other filesystems encountered are not modified by sym‐
55              links.
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57       -r     recursively  operate  on subdirectories within the same filesys‐
58              tem.
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60       -s     causes lengthy links to be detected.
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62       -t     is used to test for what symlinks would do if -c were specified,
63              but without really changing anything.
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65       -v     show  all  symbolic  links.   By default, relative links are not
66              shown unless -v is specified.
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BUGS

69       symlinks does not recurse or change links across filesystems.
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AUTHOR

72       symlinks has been written by Mark Lord <mlord@pobox.com>, the  original
73       developer  and maintainer of the IDE Performance Package for linux, the
74       Linux IDE Driver subsystem, hdparm, and a current day libata hacker.
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SEE ALSO

77       symlink(2)
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81Version 1.4                      October 2008                      SYMLINKS(8)
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