Checking for Links

[George Abraham_3]

Hello Gurus,

I need a script that can check a specific directory(/home/george) and grab all the files with Symbolic links. Then it must remove the links and mail me the details.

Thanks in advance.

[Mel Burslan]

would this following code snippet be useful ?

find /home/george -type l > /tmp/links.george
for link in `cat /tmp/george`
do
echo "link $link removed" >> /tmp/mailfile
rm $link
done
sendmail george@domain.com < /tmp/mailfile
rm /tmp/links.george /tmp/mailfile

[George Abraham_3]

hey Mel

Thanks for the reply but i dont want to remove the file.. Just remove the Link...

rm $link as you say will delete the file?

regards
George

[Eric SAUBIGNAC]

Hi Georges,

try this :

find /home/georges -type l | xargs rm -f

Eric

[George Abraham_3]

Hey i just want to remove the symbolic link and NOT THE FILE

regards
george

[Patrick Wallek · Accepted solution]

If you have something like:

lrw-rw-rw- 1 user user 96 Oct 04 11:35 file1 -> file

Now file1 is the link and file is the real file.

If you do:

# rm file1

That will just remove the file1 link. It will NOT remove file.

[Eric SAUBIGNAC]

George,

Don't worry, rm on an inode which is a symbolic link will remove the symbolic link not the file itself

Eric