ktwalker69
Level 1 (0 points)

Q: symbolic links get corrupted by system process?

Greetings Folks,

 

This was posted in another forum, so I'm reposting two messages here:

 

I am having a problem with symbolic links getting corrupted.  I have a new Mac Pro running 10.7.3.  I have defined symbolic links

 

/Users/walker/G2S -> /Volumes/L2A/G2S [this is pointing to a different partition on the same JBOD RAID]

/home -> /Users

 

The second link was created after unmounting /home and removing it from the /etc/auto_master file.

 

Both symbolic links worked for several days.  But then for some reason, without a reboot, the links became corrupted:

 

> pwd

/Users/walker

> ls -al G2S

lrwxr-xr-x  1 walker  staff  16 Mar 24 03:08 G2S -> X??G???Gҡ?G???G

> cd G2S

G2S: No such file or directory.

 

Same nonsensical definition for /home link.  I repeat, this did not happen after a reboot.  It first happened on /home.  I thought that might have been related to a new OS handling of the "/home" label.  So I deleted the /home link and did a clean reboot.  The G2S link was created after that reboot, not before.

 

After the above two problems happened, I created a new symbolic link

 

/Users/walker/G2S2 -> /Volumes/L2A/G2S

 

I then did not use this new symbolic link in any of my processing scripts.  A few weeks went by, then this link somehow got corrupted too:

 

lrwxr-xr-x   1 walker  staff     16 Apr  2 17:22 G2S2 -> 꺄G???Gĺ?Gú?G

 

Does anyone here know how symbolic links are managed on a Mac (any process that controls their linking?), or have any information to help me figure out how to fix this?  For example, could it be due to bad RAM?  I have 32 GB.

 

Thank you,

Kris Walker

Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.3)

Posted on Apr 20, 2012 3:47 PM

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Q: symbolic links get corrupted by system process?

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  • by robertk1,

    robertk1 robertk1 May 1, 2013 6:11 PM in response to btcreeper
    Level 1 (8 points)
    May 1, 2013 6:11 PM in response to btcreeper

    btcreeper wrote:

     

    Everyone running Sophos antivirus? 

     

    Nope.  Not running it, never installed it.

     

    In case you want to get a list of the symlinks on your system to refer to if (when?) corruption occurs, you can use a command like this:

     

    sudo find / -xdev -type l -type l -ls >linklisting.txt

     

    That will show you every symlink and what it points to.  Then if you later find corrupt links, you'll at least have a reference that a quick grep will show you what to do to correct it.

  • by hstimer,

    hstimer hstimer May 9, 2013 11:03 AM in response to Ed Newman
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 9, 2013 11:03 AM in response to Ed Newman

    This is just an update. I replaced my drives, and as I installed new software, I would periodically check for broken soft links.

     

    Summary

    ===

    * Wrote a busted link detector; runs much faster than the script versions. It reports all links that don't link to a file or directory.

    * So far, no corrupted links have been detected: however there are broken links. I haven't looked into the broken links to determine if they are expected behavior or not.

    * All Applications were installed via App Store

    * HomeBrew and packages were installed without sudo

    * No browser plugins were installed (flash, silverlight, etc.)

    * No drivers were installed

    * sudo was only used to detect broken links

     

    Steps

    ===

     

    Rebuilt my machine:

    * MacPro Mid 2012; 2 x 2.4 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon; 32 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 ECC; ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024 MB

    * Replaced all 4 drives with WD Red 3TB

    * Configured raid 0/1 striped pairs, and then mirror

    * Install 10.8.3

     

    Broken links:

     

    Missing link target: /Library/Frameworks/AEProfiling.framework->../../Applications/Motion.app/Contents/Frameworks/AEProfiling.framework

    Missing link target: /usr/share/java/Tools/Java VisualVM.app/Contents/Resources/VisualVM.icns->/System/Library/Java/Support/VisualVM.bundle/Contents/Resources/VisualVM.icns

     

     

    * Install xcode via App Store

     

    Missing link target: /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.7.sdk/System/Library/Frameworks/OpenGL.framework/PlugIns->Versions/Current/PlugIns

    Missing link target: /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.7.sdk/System/Library/Frameworks/System.framework/Versions/B/Resources/BridgeSupport/System.bridgesupport->../../../../../../BridgeSupport/libSystem.bridgesupport

    Missing link target: /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.7.sdk/usr/lib/python2.5->../../System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5

    Missing link target: /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.7.sdk/usr/libexec/SmartCardServices/drivers/ifd-ccid.bundle/Contents/MacOS/libccid.dylib->libccid.dylib.1.3.11

    Missing link target: /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.8.sdk/System/Library/Frameworks/OpenGL.framework/Resources->Versions/Current/Resources

    Missing link target: /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.8.sdk/System/Library/Frameworks/System.framework/Versions/B/Resources/BridgeSupport/System.bridgesupport->../../../../../../BridgeSupport/libSystem.bridgesupport

    Missing link target: /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.8.sdk/usr/lib/python2.5->../../System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5

    Missing link target: /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.8.sdk/usr/libexec/SmartCardServices/drivers/ifd-ccid.bundle/Contents/MacOS/libccid.dylib->libccid.dylib.1.3.11

    Missing link target: /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneSimulator6.1.sdk/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/OSServices.framework/Headers->Versions/Current/Headers

    Missing link target: /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneSimulator6.1.sdk/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/WebServicesCore.framework/Headers->Versions/Current/Headers

    Missing link target: /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneSimulator6.1.sdk/usr/include/c++/4.2.1/4.2.1->4.2.1

    Missing link target: /Library/Frameworks/AEProfiling.framework->../../Applications/Motion.app/Contents/Frameworks/AEProfiling.framework

    Missing link target: /Users/hans/Library/Containers/com.apple.ShareKitHelper/Data/Documents/iChats->../../../../../Documents/iChats

    Missing link target: /Users/hans/Library/Containers/com.apple.ShareKitHelper/Data/Library/Application Scripts/com.apple.ShareKitHelper->../../../../../Application Scripts/com.apple.ShareKitHelper

    Missing link target: /Users/hans/Library/Containers/com.apple.ShareKitHelper/Data/Library/ColorSync->../../../../ColorSync

    Missing link target: /usr/share/java/Tools/Java VisualVM.app/Contents/Resources/VisualVM.icns->/System/Library/Java/Support/VisualVM.bundle/Contents/Resources/VisualVM.icns

     

     

    * Install HomeBrew (does not require sudo)

     

    <no new busted links>

     

    * Install system updates

     

    1 new busted link:

     

    > Missing link target: /System/Library/StagedFrameworks/Safari/WebKit.framework/Frameworks->Versions/Current/Frameworks

     

     

    * Install some HomeBrew packages, (go, fishfish, tree, git, mercurial)

     

    < no new busted links>

     

    * Install dozens of apps via App Store

     

    < no new busted links>

     

    * Install dozen more apps via App Store

     

    < no new busted links>

     

    * Configure settings via System Preferences (turn on photo stream, among other things), install font "SourceCodePro", customize terminal.app, configure prompt to show git status

     

    New busted links:

     

    > Missing link target: /Users/hans/Library/Containers/com.apple.ImageKit.RecentPictureService/Data/Documents/iChats->../../../../../Documents/iChats

    > Missing link target: /Users/hans/Library/Containers/com.apple.ImageKit.RecentPictureService/Data/Library/Application Scripts/com.apple.ImageKit.RecentPictureService->../../../../../Application Scripts/com.apple.ImageKit.RecentPictureService

    > Missing link target: /Users/hans/Library/Containers/com.apple.ImageKit.RecentPictureService/Data/Library/ColorSync->../../../../ColorSync

    > Missing link target: /Users/hans/Library/Containers/com.apple.photostream-agent/Data/Documents/iChats->../../../../../Documents/iChats

    > Missing link target: /Users/hans/Library/Containers/com.apple.photostream-agent/Data/Library/Application Scripts/com.apple.photostream-agent->../../../../../Application Scripts/com.apple.photostream-agent

    > Missing link target: /Users/hans/Library/Containers/com.apple.photostream-agent/Data/Library/ColorSync->../../../../ColorSync

  • by simonsaith,

    simonsaith simonsaith Aug 13, 2013 10:24 AM in response to petrahu
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 13, 2013 10:24 AM in response to petrahu

    I heard that the fixes were made in Mac OSX 10.8.5 and 10.9. Check out the fixes when the releases become available.

  • by Jmanis,

    Jmanis Jmanis Jan 20, 2014 1:03 PM in response to ktwalker69
    Level 1 (11 points)
    Jan 20, 2014 1:03 PM in response to ktwalker69

    Bumping the thread to see if the concensus is that this problem is fixed. My bug report was marked as a duplicate of 12133587 and now this duplicate bug is listed as closed.  I've not changed any of the hardware and I've not experienced any symlink corruption in months but I can't say when exactly the problem went away.  There have been no mention of the issue in the relase notes unless I missed them.

     

    Is anyone else from this post still experiencing a problem?  If not perhaps we can get the thread closed for others that stumble upon it.

     

    Jeff

  • by Ed Newman,

    Ed Newman Ed Newman Jan 20, 2014 1:28 PM in response to Jmanis
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jan 20, 2014 1:28 PM in response to Jmanis

    Likewise not seen this issue for some time. Believe it was around 10.9 that this stopped occurring.

  • by nstanger,

    nstanger nstanger Jan 20, 2014 11:05 PM in response to Jmanis
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 20, 2014 11:05 PM in response to Jmanis

    I’m still getting it occasionally at home (usually after a big series of updates), but I don’t really count because I’m stuck on 10.7 until I get a new machine (planned sometime this year).

     

    Nigel.

  • by robertk1,

    robertk1 robertk1 Jan 21, 2014 2:30 AM in response to Jmanis
    Level 1 (8 points)
    Jan 21, 2014 2:30 AM in response to Jmanis

    I haven't noticed any corruption lately, but then when this was going on before, I repartitioned my drives so my boot drive is smaller than 2 TB, which seemed to be the concensus on how to resolve it at the time.  I'll run a link check and report back.

  • by robertk1,

    robertk1 robertk1 Jan 21, 2014 2:54 AM in response to robertk1
    Level 1 (8 points)
    Jan 21, 2014 2:54 AM in response to robertk1

    I ran a check and found 49 corrupt symlinks on my system.  They seem to be concentrated in the Homebrew tree, an old XCode 5 preview tree.  I seldom use either (and in fact need to delete the old XCode tree), so hadn't noticed. 

  • by Jyri Palm,

    Jyri Palm Jyri Palm Mar 9, 2015 12:02 PM in response to ktwalker69
    Level 1 (50 points)
    Mar 9, 2015 12:02 PM in response to ktwalker69

    I figure by now everyone has moved on, and Lion is officially no longer supported, but I do have one 10.7.5 server still running, and recently saw this bug appear again.  This time though, I have solid evidence of what triggered it, and it was Carbon Copy Cloner (pre-pay version).  I don't know that it contains the bug, but more likely something it calls triggers the bug under certain circumstances. 

     

    I was backing up an active mail server, and at the very time that it was reading /var, the symlink /var/spool/postfix became garbled.  Around the same time /usr/libexec/dovecot/deliver suffered the same fate.  I could see the mail literally stop flowing.

     

    I had a weekly (midnight Saturday) backup process using CCC going for a couple of years without incident.  What changed recently was converting from RAID6 to RAID10, a significantly faster file system, and that I started using CCC nightly.  My best guess is it's probably some combination of a specific mechanism being invoked in combination with a very busy file system.  I've ceased using CCC on this system, and in time it will be upgraded to 10.10.x.

     

    I thought people that wrestled with this might be interested in this finding.

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