How to remove a symlink and edit its system references?

enzo-santos · 05-02-2020, 04:16 PM

When I bought this PC, the ~ folder that came with it was located in /home/user. After a while, I decided to change my username to new_user.

From the time I bought the computer until I decided to make the username change, I had already installed some programs, so I created a symlink called /home/user pointing to /home/new_user for backwards compatibility.

My question is: how to completely remove the symlink /home/user without breaking files that already depend on that folder? If I do

Code:

grep -rnw /home/new_user -e '/home/user'

there are still files that depend on this symlink. Any help is appreciated.

WFV · 05-02-2020, 08:40 PM

rsync or otherwise copy them to their new file locations and then break the link is one method, there are probably many other means.

Code:

# rsync -aAXhv --delete --progress /home/user/ /home/new_user/

*note* do not blindly run this script! understand what rsync is doing first as this will overwrite everything in new_user with user written as is. Make sure you have a good restorable backup of your </home/...> too.
Break the link, make sure things work, then move on to the task of cleaning up users if that still applies. You can also dry-run rsync by appending an "n" to the operand

Code:

-aAXhvn

ondoho · 05-06-2020, 05:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by enzo-santos

I had already installed some programs, so I created a symlink called /home/user pointing to /home/new_user for backwards compatibility.

Does this actually work as expected?
I wouldn't think so...

shruggy · 05-06-2020, 05:25 AM

@ondoho. Well, if the UID for the new user is the same as for the old one, why not?