Where are symbolic links stored? How can I determine what links exist and how can I remove unwanted symbolic links?

I am using Mandrake 8.1 if it makes any difference. Also, I am pretty new at this game so the simpler the explanation the greater the possibility I might understand it.

winger

stored? symlinks aren't "stored" anywhere, they are a special type of file that simply points to another file. you can remove unwanted ones with a normal rm command like any otehr file.

I guess I am not making myself clear. I created (I think) a symbolic link that does not seem to work. I assume it exists somewhere out there in linux land. I would like to examine it, and possibly remove it, but I don't know how to view a file, no less remove it, without knowing its name or where it resides.

winger

How did you create the link? Where did you create it? A link that doesn't work won't hurt anything. You can just leave it if you can't find it. It just takes up a little space.

Here’s the Deal. I downloaded xsane-0.84, from http://www.mostang.com/sane/. The sane-1.0.7 libraries on my box are in “/usr/local/lib” and I guess those are the backends in “/usr/local/lib/sane/”. In order for xsane to locate them the instructions say to add the path “/usr/local/lib” to /etc/ld.so.conf and call “ldconfig”. I did this with no success.

Finally, the instructions state” If all that does not help, make sure that ‘/usr/local/lib/libsane.so.’ are symbolic links to ‘/usr/local/lib/sane/libsane-dll.so.*’ or’ ./sane/libsane-dll.so.*” When I did this I got a message saying something like,”when making multiple links the last item in the link must be a directory. So I made the link again and this time left off the “libsane-dll.so.*” from the second argument. To the best of my knowledge, a link was created but xsane still cannot locate the sane libraries.

So all that being said, I would like to know; 1. If I have a link; 2. Is it going to the right place; and 3. if not can I kill it and try again? If it is a file, I should be able to see it and remove it, but there was no indication when I ran the “ln” command what the file name would be or what directory it would be put in or for that matter if it was even successfully created.

ok do as root, I suppose (mandy is bitching about files ownerships and stuff)
ls -l /usr/local/lib/libsane.so
if it shows you
lrwxrwxrwx ......./usr/local/lib/libsane.so->/usr/local/lib/sane/libsane-dll.so.x
or such you are ok (x is for number), if not, there might be libsane-dll.so.1,libsane-dll.so.2 and so on on the system, then make a symlink to point to one of them not all (can't do it, that's probably why you have this error message) to remove it
just do
rm /usr/local/lib/libsane.so