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Best practices for using symlinks (symbolic links)

Hi there,

I use dropbox on linux with symlinks, but am not sure which is the best/preferred way to use them. Is there a best practice for using this type of configuration?

Currently I use symlinks in my home directory that point to the actual folders in my Dropbox folder, but I have heard of doing the inverse: placing symlinks in the dropbox folder pointing out into the home directory. Are there pros and cons to symlinking from the Dropbox folder to the home directory vs. placing a symlink in the home folder linking to inside the Dropbox folder?

What happens during a catastrophic failure triggering a need for data restoration, which method is preferred? Is there a way to dynamically create links for new entries (like .* folders)? Is there an advantage/disadvantage to using soft vs. hard linking?

Any links/posts with regards to the above would be most appreciated. I acknowledge that Dropbox does not fully support symbolic links, but find them so useful I am committed to using them.

Thanks in advance!

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Daphne

Hey there @zephyr707,

I would strongly recommend sticking with the current configuration you currently have, which would be having the actual files in the Dropbox folder and having your symlinks in the home directory. In this case, it wouldn’t have any affect on the files syncing as the actual files are within the Dropbox folder.

Issues occur with syncing when the files are located elsewhere and the symlink is within the Dropbox folder instead. This can cause performance issues and high CPU usage when trying to sync the files. In some cases, the desktop app may even just sync the symlink file itself and not the referenced file. This will mean the actual file won’t be synced to your Dropbox account so you wont be able to access the actual file via the web or other devices your account syncs to.

Hope this helps, let me know if you have any other questions - Thanks!

All comments

Daphne

Hey there @zephyr707,

Hope this helps, let me know if you have any other questions - Thanks!

zephyr707

Hi Daphne,

Thanks for your response, sounds like sticking with the current setup definitely makes sense.

Also, while setting up dropbox on a live usb stick, I just discovered another reason for using symlinks pointing into the Dropbox folder. Doing the inverse would likely cause the data from each separate host to clobber the other host's data. With symlinks pointing the Dropbox folder I know have the same data across hosts that I want to share in common, which is pretty useful.

From what you describe, I guess as a best practice it would be advisable to not drop any symlinks into the Dropbox folder at all as it sounds pretty risky. I hope a better solution to dealing with symlinks is developed, but until then it sounds safe to avoid using them in any way within the Dropbox hierarchy structure.

Thanks for your help!

Daphne

Hey again @zephyr707,

It seems like you have everything on point there, this set up will for sure be much more stable. I’m glad I could help to clarify the matter with you.

If you have any other questions about this then please don’t hesitate to reach out to me here - Cheers!

zephyr707

Awesome, thanks a lot, Daphne, I feel confident now setting it up this way!

p.s. the little thumbs up like button doesn't seem to be working for me, but cheers for the help!

Daphne

I’m happy to hear you’re confident with this moving forward @zephyr707!

Hope you have a great weekend!

PS. Thanks for letting me know that little hiccup there with the like button, I’ll have a look into this.

niazy

Hi there,

I've had this setup (linking my Desktop to the a ~/Dropbox/Desktop for years now. However, I just bought a new Macbook Pro running OS X catalina. Everytime I create the symlink to the Dropbox, it initially works, but then the OS restores what seems like a default folder and deletes the link.

Any ideas?

Rich

@niazy wrote:
Everytime I create the symlink to the Dropbox, it initially works, but then the OS restores what seems like a default folder and deletes the link.

I can't comment on why Catalina is replacing the symlink with a new folder, but I can say it doesn't matter much anymore. Dropbox has never supported symlinks and recently changed how they sync.

https://help.dropbox.com/installs-integrations/sync-uploads/symlinks

Dropbox will no longer sync the content at the other end of a symlink when the target folder is located outside of the Dropbox folder. i.e., You can no longer use symlinks to sync external folders like your Desktop.

niazy

Thanks Rich,

From reading about the changes, I shouldn't be affected. My link is created in my home directory and links a regular folder in Dropbox. The changes seem to only apply to symlinks created within dropbox.

niazy

I have found a workaround that may help you guys at Dropbox provide us with a more elegant solution. After creating the symlink to my Dropbox desktop folder, I locked the link file by displaying its info and checking the 'Locked' checkbox. That seems to do the trick. I checked that I can still write and save to my desktop. I have also restarted my machine (this step previously resulted in my link deleted and a new Desktop folder created) and everything is intact.

prophetofcs

Before Dropbox changed it symbolic linking policy, I would add a symbolic link to my Dropbox folder. Dropbox would automatically upload a file whenever I added or changed it that folder. However, Dropbox has changed this feature. Therefore, I no longer need Dropbox. I can use OneDrive if I have to manually put my files in a separate folder to be synched.

malikjfernando

Thanks @niazy would like some guidance on how you removed the existing desktop folder from the Mac Catalina home directory. I don't seem able to. Did you create a new desktop folder in Dropbox folder and move that locked symlink to the Mac home folder? After a restart would that delete the original desktop folder in the home folder? I'm nervous to experiment too much!

malikjfernando

Terminal didn’t allow me to create a symlink from the newly created Desktop folder in Dropbox to the home folder saying Desktop exists. So I created a link to my desktop and tried to drag it to home folder. It didn't allow me saying - “Desktop” can’t be modified or deleted because it’s required by macOS.

Marcelo4

Dear Niazy,

I am trying to implement your suggestion, but I find that upon creating Desktop as a symbolic link, when I bring up "Get Info" the "Locked" box, as well as everything else, is greyed out and not modofieable. Have you experienced that? I have Catalina too.

Thank you,

Marcelo

TLA2c

Why is this marked solved? It is still broken.

malikjfernando

yes no joy, really need to be able to link Mac OS Catalina desktop folder to Dropbox to be able to retrieve files from iOS as before

lopesgui

Dear Marcelo4,

I had the same issue with the greyed check box. I solved it by locking the folder where the symlink is inside. In my case, I locked my user folder. So far it's working. After restarting the system it stoped deleting my symlink and messing things up. I just hope I won't have problems by locking my own user folder on Mac. lol

Hope it works for you too.

jsparks

This sounds like an edge case, as plenty of users used symlinks the old way without the high CPU or missing file issue. Using ~/Dropbox as the working directory does not fit all use cases. Dropbox as a backup solution has been completely broken with the decision not to support symlinks. Dropbox could fix this by having a selective backup option in the mac app (not selective sync, selective backup), but as it stands now, Dropbox is now useless for me and all those that used it as a backup solution. This was a bad move on Dropbox's part and has forced me and others to seek out other providers.

TLA2c

Agree, am in exact same boat - I have several things I want to keep backed up / off site, where the actual data directory can't be under my user profile / dropbox folder. Symlinks allowed this to work perfectly until blocked.

jsparks

I'm currently doing an initial sync with Backblaze. Will post here how my experience is after I have a chance to kick the tires a bit. No symlink support, but it backs up everything with unlimited storage and allows you to create links to send other people to download. I suspect that will be enough to satisfy what I mostly need it for.

AnotherAnon

Reality check here. a) I use a symlink to include my Desktop accross multiple devices. b) I'm NOT moving my Desktop in the 'Dropbox' folder. Th systems require it to be right where it belongs.

So I guess it's Good Bye after many years of what was a great service.

Fle1

Agree with AnotherAnon,

I also use symlinks to have all my devices Desktops available on the cloud. I cannot move my Desktops folders to dropbox folder.

What a stupid change by part of Dropbox! If Dropbox do not remediate this soon i will also say goodbye to Dropbox....

JodyB

Unfortunately, this has broken my use for Dropbox as well. I always understood it wasn't a supported option, but to completely remove it has also removed the usability of your product. Not a good way to treat your customers.

Peter S.32

I will cancel my Dropbox abonnement immediately if this is really taking place in linux (I am not sure whether it happened right now, would be shocking for me). I do not know why those stupid companies break such valuable functionality all the time. I cannot move the files to the actual dropbox folders, because they are spread over six or seven different computers, on disks mounted with NFS, and some folders are mapped with symbolic links into the dropbox on my main Linux server, which is my cloud backup.

Alternatively, I could export the relevant folders individually with nfs and mount them into the Dropbox. Would this work? What would happen if a connection and thus the mount fails, and there is only the empty mount point? Would the data in the cloud be erased?

"High CPU use" is just a symptom for buggy programming, the symbolic links cannot impose a fundamental problem. It rather shows that Dropbox has lost it's interest to fully support Linux. I'm very disappointed with Dropbox. I think they will quit bussiness soon; they have lost their edge over the competitors.

zephyr707

I'm the OP and I marked this resolved b/c I wanted to know the best practices for using Dropbox with symlinks on Linux. Granted, as others have mentioned, it is not ideal, but I'd rather backup via a method that is blessed by Dropbox and not lose my data.

For those with multiple Desktops (or any other directory like Pictures, Music, Videos, etc) across different hosts, my solution has been to create separate host parent dirs with the relevant dirs to backup and then symlink from the host into this hierarchy. I agree it is not ideal, it seems like it would be a lot better to symlink from within Dropbox out to the folder, but Peter S.32 tangentially brings something up I had not thought of: if you symlink from within Dropbox out to a folder and that link gets broken, will Dropbox just zero out the data until the link gets fixed? That seems risky to me and I don't feel like testing it, so I'm sticking with my setup.

If anyone has moved on from Dropbox and cares to share their experience, please do post (thanks jsparks), thanks! I've been looking at a few other options as well since Dropbox seems to not be able to figure out how to backup iOS burst photos (they blame apple/iOS), but google photos has been able to for a while.

cheers

Peter S.32

Sorry, but you just quote a problem which I mention in my post. I suggest to read it again. Yet, I will discuss possible solutions:
If a mount or symlink breaks, the sync demon must handle that correctly. This means: no syncing action whatsoever in those folders, as if there was no internet connection at all. The other folders, however, should be synced as usual. Once the symlink or mount goes valid again, the folder should be rechecked and synced, as if I had worked offline. I think this is what the user expects, isn't it?
The question is how to achieve that. This is an entirely technical question, and Dropbox was always leading in robust syncing, so I think their engineers do not need my help here. However, as you ask, there are several possibilities:
1) The demon should remember and check whether a directory is a mount point, or a symbolic link, by using the information provided by the file system. If it is, it should be checked whether the connection is just down, or whether the user actively changed it (e.g. by replacing a symbolic link with a local directory or vice versa). If the user's purpose is clear, it should be respected. If the demon cannot figure it out, a "conflicting copy" of the folder should be created.
2) A hidden file in every directory, marking it as that which was actually synced, when and with what, will help the demon a lot in figuring out what should be done. If a mount fails, it will show up as an empty directory, without the marker file. It should be igored, but shown as "offline" in the Web-interface. If the user deletes the marker file, a "conflicting copy" of the whole folder could be created, if there are any binary differences of the files. The marker files also help if a file system does not show links and mounts properly, and will even help against circular hard links.
3) If everything failed (e.g. because of a "bug" in Windows with the purpose of tricking Dropbox into deleting files) there is still the possibility to recover lost files.

It is just a technical problem.

numan

Fopbox support page here (https://help.dropbox.com/installs-integrations/sync-uploads/symlinks) says…

If you wish to have a directory available both in Dropbox and another location on your computer, you can put the target directory in Dropbox and the symlink outside of the Dropbox folder. By doing this, you will be able to have the file in both places and the contents will be backed up by Dropbox.

OK - so how about someone telling us how to acheive that for the required Desktop and Downloads folder in MacOS. If the answer to that is "it cant be done" then it sounds like Dropboxx has either A) lost a game of cat and mouse with Apple's competing iCloud sync and feels it cant win so is giving up or is trying to reduce it's own costs per user by eliminating hi-frequency change folders.

I am really really hoping there is a solution to this that someone can document in steps that are followable without being a UNIX expert

siamesekitten

I'm a Mac consultant and I've been using the below excellent directions from ZDNet to sync Desktop and Documents folders across multiple computers via Dropbox for years. Also works for single computers, of course. Works perfectly and uses the method Dropbox recommends/supports. I've got literally dozens of clients using it. If you have a problem with the symlinks getting deleted, lock them, as mentioned earlier in this thread.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/beyond-icloud-syncing-your-desktop-and-documents-between-macs-using-dropbox/

numan

thanks - i will try this. the article does not mention this working witt Desktop folder. Have you been able to do that?

siamesekitten

Yes, I always do both documents and desktop folders. They work exactly the same.

unknown

I just discovered that Dropbox is replacing my symlinks in my home directory with a copy of the files linked to. For example, I had this symlink, "ln -s /share/xxx/whatever /home/me/whatever" and it looks like Dropbox replaced that symlink with a copy of the entire subdirectory /share/xxx. I use symlinks a lot, and now I have duplicate copies of files everywhere. What I'd like is to have Dropbox leave my symlinks alone! If I can't find a solution for this I'll be looking elsewhere for my backup!!!