When I try to create a symbolic link from the Git Bash shell, it fails every time all the time:
ln -s /c/Users/bzisad0/Work testlink
Output:
ln: creating symbolic link `testlink' to `/c/Users/bzisad0/Work': Permission denied
The only thing it does, besides giving the error message, is create an empty directory named (in this case) testlink.
I don't see any problem with the ln executable. For instance, it is owned by me and marked as executable:
which ln
ls -hal /bin/ln
Output:
/bin/ln
-rwxr-xr-x 1 BZISAD0 Administ 71k Sep 5 11:55 /bin/ln
I also own the current directory (~, which is /c/Users/bzisad0):
ls -dhal .
Output:
drwxr-xr-x 115 BZISAD0 Administ 40k Sep 5 12:23 .
I have administrative rights, and I've tried opening the Git Bash shell with "Run as Administrator", but that makes no difference.
I've tried opening the Windows properties for ln.exe and setting the Privilege Level to "Run this program as an administrator" but that doesn't help.
I've gone into the Security → Advanced properties in Windows and made myself (rather than the Administrators group) the owner, but that doesn't fix anything either.
I'm at a loss. I don't know whether this error message is ultimately coming from ln, from Bash, or from Windows, or how I could possibly lack the permission. How can I get to the bottom of this?
It is possible, albeit extremely awkward, to create a symbolic link in MSysGit.
First, we need to make sure we are on Windows. Here's an example function to check that:
windows() { [[ -n "$WINDIR" ]]; }
Now, we can't do cmd /C, because MSysGit will fornicate with this argument and turn it into C:. Also, don't be tempted to use /K; it only works if you don't have a K: drive.
So while it will replace this value on program arguments, it won't on heredocs. We can use this to our advantage:
if windows; then
cmd <<< "mklink /D \"${link%/}\" \"${target%/}\"" > /dev/null
else
ln -s "$target" "$link"
fi
Also: note that I included /D because I'm interested in directory symlinks only; Windows has that distinction. With plenty of effort, you could write a ln() { ... } function that wraps the Windows API and serves as a complete drop-in solution, but that's... left as an exercise for the reader.
As a thank-you for the accepted answer, here's a more comprehensive function.
# We still need this.
windows() { [[ -n "$WINDIR" ]]; }
# Cross-platform symlink function. With one parameter, it will check
# whether the parameter is a symlink. With two parameters, it will create
# a symlink to a file or directory, with syntax: link $linkname $target
link() {
if [[ -z "$2" ]]; then
# Link-checking mode.
if windows; then
fsutil reparsepoint query "$1" > /dev/null
else
[[ -h "$1" ]]
fi
else
# Link-creation mode.
if windows; then
# Windows needs to be told if it's a directory or not. Infer that.
# Also: note that we convert `/` to `\`. In this case it's necessary.
if [[ -d "$2" ]]; then
cmd <<< "mklink /D \"$1\" \"${2//\//\\}\"" > /dev/null
else
cmd <<< "mklink \"$1\" \"${2//\//\\}\"" > /dev/null
fi
else
# You know what? I think ln's parameters are backwards.
ln -s "$2" "$1"
fi
fi
}
Also note a few things:
I just wrote this and briefly tested it on Windows 7 and Ubuntu, give it a try first if you're from 2015 and using Windows 9.
NTFS has reparse points and junction points. I chose reparse points, because it's more of an actual symbolic link and works for files or directories, but junction points would have the benefit of being an usable solution in Windows XP, except it's just for directories.
Some filesystems, the FAT ones in particular, do not support symbolic links. Modern Windows versions do not support booting from them anymore, but Windows and Linux can mount them.
Bonus function: remove a link.
# Remove a link, cross-platform.
rmlink() {
if windows; then
# Again, Windows needs to be told if it's a file or directory.
if [[ -d "$1" ]]; then
rmdir "$1";
else
rm "$1"
fi
else
rm "$1"
fi
}
For my setup, that is Git for Windows 2.11.0 installed on Windows 8.1, export MSYS=winsymlinks:nativestrict does the trick as
The Git Bash shell may need to be run as an administrator, as by default on Windows only administrators can create the symbolic links.
So, in order to make tar -xf work and create the required symbolic links:
Run Git Bash shell as an administrator
Run export MSYS=winsymlinks:nativestrict
Run tar
A workaround is to run mklink from Bash. This also allows you to create either a symbolic link or a junction point.
Take care to send the mklink command as a single argument to cmd...
cmd /c "mklink link target"
Here are the options for mklink...
cmd /c mklink
Output:
Creates a symbolic link.
MKLINK [[/D] | [/H] | [/J]] Link Target
/D Creates a directory symbolic link. Default is a file
symbolic link.
/H Creates a hard link instead of a symbolic link.
/J Creates a Directory Junction.
Link specifies the new symbolic link name.
Target specifies the path (relative or absolute) that the new link
refers to.
If you want to create links via a GUI instead ... I recommend Link Shell Extension that is a Windows Explorer plugin for creating symbolic links, hard links, junction points, and volume mount points. I've been using it for years!
Link Shell Extension
Symbolic links can be a life saver if you have a smaller SSD drive on your system C: drive and need to symbolic link some bloated folders that don't need to be on SSD, but off onto other drives. I use the free WinDirStat to find the disk space hogs.
I believe that the ln that shipped with MSysGit simply tries to copy its arguments, rather than fiddle with links. This is because links only work (sort of) on NTFS filesystems, and the MSYS team didn't want to reimplement ln.
See, for example, http://mingw.5.n7.nabble.com/symbolic-link-to-My-Documents-in-MSYS-td28492.html
Do
Grant yourself privileges to create symbolic links.
Search for local security policies
Local Policies/User Rights Assignment/Create symbolic links
Take a moment to scold Windows. "Bad OS! Bad!"
Profit
This grants you the privilege to create symbolic links. Note, this takes effect on the next login.
The next step is to figure out how ln is configured:
env | grep MSYS
We are looking for MSYS=winsymlink: which controls how ln creates symbolic links.
If the variable doesn't exist, create it. Note, this will overwrite the existing MSYS environment variable.
setx MSYS winsymlinks:nativestrict
Do not
Run your shell as an administrator just to create symbolic links.
Explanation
The error is somewhat self-explanatory, yet elusive.
You lack the appropriate privileges to run the command.
Why?
Be default, Windows only grants symlink creation rights to Administrators.
Cygwin has to do a song and dance to get around Windows subpar treatment of symbolic links.
Why?
Something, something "security"
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Edit:
I just realized OP had admin rights. I leave this answer up, hoping it's useful to others.
Extending Camilo Martin's answer as you need to use the /j parameter switch for Windows 10; otherwise the call will just return "You do not have sufficient privilege to perform this operation."
This works for Git Bash 2.20.1.windows.1/MINGW64 (Windows 10) without administrator rights (if you can read/write both /old/path and /link/path:
original_folder=$(cygpath -w "/old/path")
create_link_new_folder=$(cygpath -w "/link/path")
cmd <<< "mklink /j \"${create_link_new_folder}\" \"${original_folder}\"" > /dev/null
For anyone who's interested in how to accomplish this in Windows 10 Git Bash 2.28.0.0.1:
You have to prefix the ln -s command with the MSYS=.. instead of executing export MSYS=.. first, namely it's just one command:
MSYS=winsymlinks:nativestrict ln -s <TARGET> <NEW_LINK_NAME>
Since this is one of the top links that come up when searching for creating symbolic links in MSYS or Git Bash, I found the answer was to add
set MSYS=winsymlinks:native when calling git-cmd.exe (I run ConEmu) or uncomment the same line in the msys2_shell.bat file.
I prefer PowerShell to CMD, and thought I'd share the PowerShell version of this.
In my case it consists of making symbolic links linking ~/.$file to ~/dotfiles/$file, for dotfile configurations. I put this inside a .sh script and ran it with Git Bash:
powershell New-Item -ItemType SymbolicLink\
-Path \$Home/.$file\
-Target \$Home/dotfiles/$file
Instead of symbolic links on Windows, I found it easier to write a small Bash script that I place in my ~/bin directory.
To start Notepad++ with the npp command, I have this file:
~/bin/npp
#!/usr/bin/bash
'/c/Program Files (x86)/Notepad++/notepad++.exe' $#
And I get the path syntax right by dragging and dropping the file from Windows Explorer into Vim.
The Windows command mklink /J Link Target doesn't seem to work any more.
git bash honors the symbolic links created by cygwin. The caveat is that the symbolic link not use, e.g., '/cygdrive/c/directory' and instead use '/c/directory'.
First of all, this is my first post here and I must specify that I'm a total Linux newb.
We have recently bought a QNAP NAS box for the office, on this box we have a large amount of data which was copied off an old Mac XServe machine. A lot of files and folders originally had forward slashes in the name (HFS+ should never have allowed this in the first place), which when copied to the NAS were all replaced with a colon.
I now want to rename all colons to underscores, and have found the following commands in another thread here: pitfalls in renaming files in bash
However, the flavour of Linux that is on this box does not understand the rename command, so I'm having to use mv instead. I have tried using the code below, but this will only work for the files in the current folder, is there a way I can change this to include all subfolders?
for f in *.*; do mv -- "$f" "${f//:/_}"; done
I have found that I can find al the files and folders in question using the find command as follows
Files:
find . -type f -name "*:*"
Folders:
find . -type d -name "*:*"
I have been able to export a list of the results above by using
find . -type f -name "*:*" > files.txt
I tried using the command below but I'm getting an error message from find saying it doesn't understand the exec switch, so is there a way to pipe this all into one command, or could I somehow use the files I exported previously?
find . -depth -name "*:*" -exec bash -c 'dir=${1%/*} base=${1##*/}; mv "$1" "$dir/${base//:/_}"' _ {} \;
Thank you!
Vincent
So your for loop code works, but only in the current dir. Also, you are able to use find to build a file with all the files with : in the filename.
So, as you've already done all this, I would just loop over each line of your file, and perform the same mv command.
Something like this:
for f in `cat files.txt`; do mv $f "${f//:/_}"; done
EDIT:
As pointed out by tripleee, using a while loop is a better solution
EG
while read -r f; do mv "$f" "${f//:/_}"; done <files.txt
Hope this helps.
Will
I'm developing a large web application in Eclipse and some of the resources (I'm talking about files, NOT code) are getting deprecated, however, I don't know which are and I'm including them in my ending war file.
I know Eclipse recognizes file paths into its directory because I can access the link to an image or other page while I'm editing one of my xhtml pages (using Control). But is there a way to localize the unused resources in order to remove them?
Following these 3 steps would work for sites with a relatively finite number of dynamic pages:
Install your site on a filesystem mount'ed with atime (access time).
Try harvesting the whole site with wget.
Use find to see which files were not accessed recently.
Done.
As I know Eclipse doesn't have this (need this too).
I'm using grep in conjuction with bash scripting - shell script takes files in my resource folder, put filenames in list, greping throught source code for every record in the list and if grep find it it is removed.
At the end list is printed on console - just unused resources retain in the list.
UCDetector might be your best bet, specifically, the custom marker aspects of this tool.
In Eclipse I have not found a way. I have used the following shell command script.
Find .ftl template files which are NOT referenced in .java files
cd myfolder
find . -name "*.ftl" -printf "%f\n" |while read fname; do grep --include \*.java -rl "$fname" . > /dev/null || echo "${fname} not referenced" ; done;
or
Find all .ftl template files which are NOT referenced in .java, .ftl, .inc files
cd myfolder
find . -name "*.ftl" -printf "%f\n" |while read fname; do grep --include \*.java --include \*.ftl --include \*.inc -rl "$fname" . > /dev/null || echo "${fname} not referenced" ; done;
Note: on MacOSX you can use gfind instead of find in case -printf is not working.
Example output
productIndex2.ftl not referenced
showTestpage.ftl not referenced
How do I find and replace every occurrence of:
foo
with
bar
in every text file under the /my/test/dir/ directory tree (recursive find/replace).
BUT I want to be able to do it safely within an SVN checkout and not touch anything inside the .svn directories
Similar to this but now with the SVN restriction: Awk/Sed: How to do a recursive find/replace of a string?
There are several possiblities:
Using find:
Using find to create a list of all files, and then piping them to sed or the equivalent, as suggested in the answer you reference, is fairly straightforward, and only requires scanning through the files once.
You'd use one of the same answers as from the question you referenced, but adding -path '*/.svn' -prune -o after the find . in order to prune out the SVN directories. See this question for a discussion of using the prune option with find -- although note that they've got the pattern wrong. Thus, to print out all the files, you would use:
find . -path '*/.svn' -prune -o -type f -print
Then, you can pipe that into an xargs call or whatever to do the individual replacements, as suggested in the question you referenced. There is a lot of discussion there about different options, which I won't reproduce here, although I prefer the version from John Zwinck's answer:
find . -path '*/.svn' -prune -o -type f -exec sed -i 's/foo/bar/g' {} +
Using recursive grep:
If you have a system with GNU grep, you can use that to find the list of files as well. This is probably less efficient than find, but it does allow you to only call sed on the files that match, and I personally find the syntax a lot easier to remember (or figure out from manpages):
sed -i 's/foo/bar/g' `grep -l -R --exclude-dir='*/.svn' 'foo' .`
The -l option causes grep to only output the list of file names, rather than the matching lines.
Using a GUI editor:
Alternately, if you're using windows, do what I do -- get a copy of the NoteTab editor (available in a free version), and use its search-and-replace-on-disk command, which ignores hidden .svn directories automatically and just works.
Edit: Corrected find pattern to */.svn instead of .svn, added more details and some other possibilities. However, this depends on your platform and svn version: .svn without */ may be required in some cases, like on CentOS 7.
How about this?
grep -i "search_string" `find "*.some_extension"`
That is halfway solution to finding a search_string within files that have a specific extension....once you know the files that has the string, can be easily modified by piping it into sed....
Could somebody tell me how to find the definition of a symbol in a shared object file on Solaris.
Thanks
Raj
On the Solaris machines I have access to nm is available and can be used for this. For instance:
nm /usr/lib/libc.so
Shows all of the symbols in libc.so and then checking if a symbol is defined in this library is simply a matter of reading through the output.
Probably you want to pass the -g and -D options too for most cases. If you're looking to search a bunch of libraries you could try using:
find /usr/lib -name '*.so' -exec nm -gD {} \; |grep "symbol_name"
Or similar