[SLUG] Broken symlinks

[aardvark llama]

>I have many files which are shown with white lettering on a red background,
>when usin 'ls -al' at the command line .  Sometimes the lettering is also
>flashing.  It has been suggested that a red background is displayed because
>of a broken symlink.  I'm not sure what this is or how I can fix it.

The colouring is an artifact of using gnu fileutils. If you type:
bogon:~$ alias ls
you should get something like:
alias ls='ls --colour=tty -F -b -T 0'

This is a nice feature but not always helpful because it *is* configurable 
and I could have configured ls to display broken links as mauve with a hint 
of aqua.

The important stuff to look at is not the colour but stuff like:

bongo:~$ ls -l munch-flak/
total 4
-rw-r--r--   1 boco     users           0 Sep 17 20:16 1
-rw-r--r--   1 boco     users          20 Sep 17 20:16 2
lrwxrwxrwx   1 boco     users           1 Sep 17 20:17 4 -> 6/
lrwxrwxrwx   1 boco     users           1 Sep 17 20:16 5 -> 5
drwxr-xr-x   2 boco     users        4096 Sep 17 20:17 6/
lrwxrwxrwx   1 boco     users           1 Sep 17 20:17 7 -> 2
lrwxrwxrwx   1 boco     users           1 Sep 17 20:18 8 -> 3

Without enhanced gnu-o-vision, what does this all mean?
Simply this:
1 and 2 are files. 1 is zero length and 2 is 20 bytes long;
4 is a symbolic link to the directory 6;
5 is a -- useless -- symbolic link to itself;
6 is a directory;
7 is a symbolic link to the file 2;
8 is a symbolic link to a non-existant file 3.

To check whether a link exist -- for example in the case of file 8 -- take 
the path to the file pointed to, say 3, and ls *that*. In the case of file 8 
running ls 3 gives "No such file or directory" and so 8 is a dead link.

>
>Anyone know?
>
>'.DCOPserver_localhost.localdomain -> /home/al/
>.DCOPsever_localhost.localdomain_:0'
This (I think) looks like a self referential symbolic link -- like for 
example 5 above.

Hope this doesn't muddy the waters too much.

:)w

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