When I deleted the target directory, and then tried to delete the symbolic link, it finally got deleted.

But isnt there a way to delete a soft link without deleting the target?

Why did you delete the directory? My example in post #2 is the exact command
I issued this morning when I got the new version of java, installed it, and deleted
the link to the old version. I don't know what you did incorrectly with your links,
but rm public_html is all that would have been necessary to remove a symlink.

To get a better understanding of symlinks, etc., issue
$ man symlink
and read that, and also
$ man ln
and any of the other ones listed at the bottom of one of those pages you think
will help you in the future.

Probably the way in which you created the symlink in the first place was wrong,
which is where Holly was trying to lead you.

I suspect that when you created the symlink you did it backwards. The proper
way would have been to first issue
$ mkdir /home/elixir/public_html
and then make the symlink by issuing
$ ln -s /home/elixir/public_html/ elixir

I did not do the symlink creation backwards. The target directory was created before the symlink. while in the directory where symlink is to be created, I issued the following commands:

# ln -s /home/elixir/public_html .

This created a symlink with the name "public_html" in this directory.
I realised that I wanted the symlink name to be "elixir" and not "public_html", so I tried to delete this symlink. And encountered this problem.

I should have done it as
# ln -s /home/elixir/public_html elixir

This did my job, but the symlink with the name public_html remained in the directory.

Hey, you got me confused. Unless I'm mistaken, you should have created the
symlink from within /home/elixir ...

Is your problem solved, and do you have a correct symlink now?

You can't do that, can you? The ln -s command creates the symlink in the current directory you're in, right? So if you created a symlink to /home/elixer/public_html from within /home/elixer/, you'd have two files/folders named the same (public_html) and it would be refused.

Or so I thought. Now, mind you, if you're running a two-paned file manager, like gnome-commander or something, the symlink requested in the current directory of one pane will be created in the current directory of the other pane, so clearly it is possible to place a symlink in another location from within the directory where the target lives. And in that case it could be called the same as the target. But not if you're in the same directory as the target and you don't use any paths to make the link (I just tried it and got a "can't overwrite directory" message).

But none of that explains why you couldn't delete a symlink, unless the fact that there were two symlinks pointing to the same location in the same place had some effect. I understand that deleting the target obviously unlinks the symlinks, so they can then be deleted (since they're useless), but you can even delete and remake the link to "linux" in /usr/src/ (which is a way more important symlink than pretty much any other one on the system), so I really can't see why this link should have been unremoveable. Unless maybe it needed to be forced with rm -f?

Holly, think about what you're saying. It's the same as creating
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 12 Jun 3 22:30 linux -> linux-2.4.22
You create the link in /usr/src by issuing
# ln -s /usr/src/linux-2.4.22 /usr/src/linux
from within /usr/src

Now in his example, from /home/elixir one would first issue
$ mkdir ~/public_html
and then issue
$ ln -s ~/public_html elixir
which would give him
lrwxrwxrwx 1 mingdao users 26 Jun 7 20:56 elixir -> /home/mingdao/public_html/
a symlink of elixir pointing to the actual directory of /home/mingdao/public_html/

That would be proper, but he said that he created the public_html symlink first,
and then the exilir symlink. You cannot do that...just try it on your system. It will
create this
lrwxrwxrwx 1 mingdao users 11 Jun 7 21:23 public_html -> public_html
within ~/public_html

His link was created incorrectly. I think we're either being had or someone can't explain themselves...

From man ls:
So, I was right, that if you give the ln -s command with only one parameter (source of link), that the link will be created in the current directory, and if a file, will give it the same name as "the last component of the name of" the file that is being targeted.

However, the rules for directories seem to be different, because if I try to make a symlink to a directory from within the directory housing the directory that I'm targeting, this is what happens:

Is this not because making a symlink without parameters would give me a "folder" (really a symlink) that would also be called "nwn", which would put 2 "nwn" folders in the same directory, which you cannot do? Naturally if I did

the symlink is created properly, because I have given it a name different from any of the pre-existing folders in this folder. (And I just deleted that symlink, without problems ).

I am intrigued about this "locking" issue mentioned in the man page, though. I'm not even sure how or why you'd lock a symlink (or, presumably the target folder by extension), but it sure seems to fit the symptoms.

This is a new question but relavent to current thread.
By mistake i have made the link of a directory to itself by command.

bash:ln -s linux-2.4.14-18.9 linux-2.4.14-18.9

bash:ls -l
linux-2.4.14-18.9 -> linux-2.4.14-18.9

Now when i try to cd to linux-2.4.14-18.9, i get error

bash:linux-2.4.14-18.9: Too many levels of symbolic links

I cannot affrd to lose my kernel source, what can i do now.

I tried out this on my machine and got the following:

On executing the command (I used some other directory, though), it created a symbolic link within the specified directory. Eg if my directory name is xyz and i give the command

[aroop@linux2 cprod]$ ln -s xyz xyz

It creates a symbolic link "inside" the xyz directory. I can do a cd to xyz, and found this:

[aroop@linux2 xyz]$ ls -l
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 aroop cscilug 3 Jul 1 13:23 xyz -> xyz
[aroop@linux2 xyz]$

Anyway, I can remove this xyz softlink (pointing nowhere) using rm.

May be you are doing something similar...

Hi,
Hope it's not too late but the solution to this is to unlink the smbolic link you created , so do this

#unlink public_html

or whatever link name you have when you do ls -al

cheers