Re: Question on bad links?

[Jonathan Billings <billings@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sep 16, 2022, at 20:44, Michael D. Setzer II via users <users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Was not aware of that program? Was already installed on my system. Following instructions from link, it found 279 of the broken links under /usr and after checking, I went ahead are removed them.

Doing the run using / instead of /usr it comes up with the other 29 in various placed. That includes the one I created for test earlier, but is 28 I'll have to look  into more. Using the symlink to fix the 279 seems good

Why do you care about broken symlinks again? What harm are they causing?  Because looking at the following output makes me think you’re just going to break stuff. 

dangling: /root/.mozilla/firefox/u3x6t962.default-release/lock -> 192.168.16.107:+945347

Firefox uses symlinks as a kind of lock file pointing to a running session. It’s not a broken symlink. 

Although running Firefox as root is pretty bad. Stop. 

dangling: /var/lib/docker/overlay2/e88368956b0fb3f25b2a8709be6b74dbdd936b76976b66dfe4756f1192b384e0/diff/bin/pidof -> /sbin/killall5

If you like destroying your docker containers, feel free to use these tools, but these are expected in a docker space. 

dangling: /testbroke/test2 -> /badlinks-cleanx

dangling: /etc/crypto-policies/back-ends/openssh-server.config -> /usr/share/crypto-policies/DEFAULT/openssh-server.txt

dangling: /etc/systemd/system/sockets.target.wants/sssd-secrets.socket -> /usr/lib/systemd/system/sssd-secrets.socket

dangling: /etc/systemd/system/local-fs.target.wants/fedora-readonly.service -> /usr/lib/systemd/system/fedora-readonly.service

dangling: /etc/systemd/system/sysinit.target.wants/fedora-import-state.service -> /usr/lib/systemd/system/fedora-import-state.service

dangling: /etc/systemd/system/sysinit.target.wants/lvm2-lvmetad.socket -> /usr/lib/systemd/system/lvm2-lvmetad.socket

Systemd uses symlinks for unit activation dependencies. They should be cleaned up after but leaving them is unlikely to break anything. 

dangling: /etc/extlinux.conf -> ../boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf

Then there are some listed as messy: and other_fs:??

cut -f1 -d: <symlink-out | sort | uniq -c

  35611 absolute

     29 dangling

    236 messy

     56 other_fs

Learn new things all the time. Thanks.

I saw earlier you were looking under /run, which is also a bad idea. Systemd uses symlinks in a similar way that Firefox did, to store metadata rather than point to an actual file. 

I think it’s probably ok to run in /usr to find broken software but the OS uses symlinks in ways you might not understand, and you can break things. Avoid /run, /proc, /sys and other OS tmpfs volumes. I’d probably not delete any links in /etc either, unless you know exactly what it’s for. 

--

Jonathan Billings

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