can't create symlink to my home path

nick623 · 02-13-2006, 07:41 PM

I recently installed firefox in my home directory. I wanted to symlink the executable to a directory thats already in my $PATH. I have $HOME/bin added to my $PATH. Firefox is located in $HOME/bin/firefox. When I try ln -s $HOME/bin/firefox/firefox $HOME/bin I get error message ln: `bin/firefox': cannot overwrite directory.
I know I can just add the firefox directory to my $PATH. But I think it's more effecient to just symlink the executable. I'm a relativey newbie and I haven't really used the symlink command much. So I'm sure the problem is something really obvious and simple.

If someone could help I would appreciate it.
Thanks.

gilead · 02-13-2006, 07:53 PM

You're trying to create 2 objects with the same name in the one directory - a sub-directory called firefox that already exists and a link called firefox.

Can you install firefox somewhere else? /usr/lib/firefox-1.x.x is a popular location - even /usr/local/firefox-1.x.x or /opt/firefox-1.x.x would work. Then you can create the symlink again and it should work just fine.

michaelk · 02-13-2006, 08:04 PM

Quote:

ln -s $HOME/bin/firefox/firefox $HOME/bin

Like the previous post said.

So use another link name
ls -s $HOME/bin/firefox/firefox $HOME/bin/Firefox (use capital F or any other name that isn't firefox)

nick623 · 02-13-2006, 08:24 PM

Thanks for the ideas. Well I tryed the symlink command ln -s $HOME/bin/firefox/firefox $HOME/bin/Firefox(capitalized F). Now the Firefox symlink is displayed in red when i 'ls' it. And when I issue 'file' command to Firefox i get message "bin/Firefox: broken symbolic link to bin/firefox/firefox." Why is it broken now. Any ideas?

gilead · 02-13-2006, 08:30 PM

Now that's odd - I copy/pasted what you did into a terminal and it worked for me. Can you do `ls -l $HOME/bin/Firefox` and confirm that the location it is pointing to exists? For example:

Code:

$ ls -l $HOME/bin/Firefox
lrwxrwxrwx  1 websters websters 34 2006-02-14 11:18 /home/websters/bin/Firefox -> /home/websters/bin/firefox/firefox
$ ls -l /home/websters/bin/firefox/firefox
-rwxr-xr--  1 websters websters 0 2006-02-14 11:00 /home/websters/bin/firefox/firefox

nick623 · 02-13-2006, 08:37 PM

Yeah here is what i get using ls -l.
total 4
drwx------ 12 newbie newbie 4096 Feb 13 20:32 firefox
lrwxrwxrwx 1 newbie newbie 19 Feb 13 20:49 Firefox -> bin/firefox/firefox

Except "Firefox -> bin/firefox/firefox" is all in red.

nick623 · 02-13-2006, 08:39 PM

Here is what I get when I issue file command to Firefox.

file Firefox
Firefox: broken symbolic link to bin/firefox/firefox

michaelk · 02-13-2006, 08:57 PM

What does ls -l $HOME/bin/firefox/firefox display?

nick623 · 02-13-2006, 09:19 PM

I went ahead and removed the symlink for now.
Here is what ls -l $HOME/bin/firefox/firefox displays.

ls -l bin/firefox/firefox
-rwx------ 1 5247 Jan 24 19:32 bin/firefox/firefox

gilead · 02-13-2006, 09:53 PM

Your $HOME/bin/firefox directory is on the same partition as the $HOME/bin directory isn't it? I get that error when I create symlinks to files on different partitions.

nick623 · 02-13-2006, 10:03 PM

Yeah there on the same directory. I have simple set up very few partitions.

I wonder if I moved the firefox to another $HOME directory called "programs" or something like that and created a symlink to it in $HOME/bin would be different?
I don't know, wierd.

gilead · 02-13-2006, 10:19 PM

Even moving the directory to $HOME/bin/firefox-1.5 should allow a link from $HOME/bin/firefox-1.5/firefox to $HOME/bin/firefox. But yes, moving it to somewhere else will do the trick (as long as the symlink is on the same partition as the file it points to).

michaelk · 02-13-2006, 10:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nick623

Yeah here is what i get using ls -l.
total 4
drwx------ 12 newbie newbie 4096 Feb 13 20:32 firefox
lrwxrwxrwx 1 newbie newbie 19 Feb 13 20:49 Firefox -> bin/firefox/firefox

Except "Firefox -> bin/firefox/firefox" is all in red.

The link should point to the entire path i.e
Firefox -> /home/username/bin/firefox/firefox.

For some reason $HOME environment variable does not appear to be assigned anything. You can see from gilead's post
$HOME expands to /home/websters.

Instead of $HOME you can use the full path in your link statement.
BTW what is the output of
echo $HOME

nick623 · 02-13-2006, 10:36 PM

My $HOME variable is set correctly. Here is what I get when I issue the command "echo $Home" /home/newbie. I believe the problem may have been I didn't use an absolute path but a relative path.

Anyway. I did finally got the symlink to work. I moved the firefox directory to a new directory "program_files" and made a symlink to it in my home directory. It seems to be working fine!

Thanks guys for your help.