What is a "failed to create a symbolic link: file exists" error?

Question

I'm trying to create a symlink in my home directory to a directories and files on my data partition. I've tried:

~/Documents$ ln -sv ~/Documents/saga /media/mariajulia/485f3e29-355c-4be3-b80a-1f5abd5604b6/mariajulia/Downloads/saga..doc

to create a symlink named saga in my Documents directory in my home folder. The terminal output is:

ln: failed to create symbolic link ‘/media/mariajulia/485f3e29-355c-4be3-b80a-1f5abd5604b6/mariajulia/Downloads/saga..doc’: File exists

I was checking the content of ~/Documents with ls -a , there is nothing but . and ... In general my home folder is empty, it's just a fresh system installation.

Thanks. It seems my question is not very useful. Should I delete it? Or you convert your comment in the reply so I could accept it as solved :) — maria, Oct 30 '14 at 09:57
Your question has a score of four, so apparently the community decided that it _is_ useful. Also, even if you tried you wouldn't be able to delete the question, since it has an answer with a score of 1 or more. — 11684, Oct 30 '14 at 19:29
I got my answer to this question from here (on this forum): http://askubuntu.com/questions/379647/failed-to-create-symbolic-link-usr-bin-utserver-file-exists/379649#379649 — wayneeusa, Jun 24 '15 at 07:57
Use `ln -sf` instead of `ln -s`. Be careful though, as this may overwrite your original file with a broken symlink. Check what's been typed carefully *before* you add the `-f` flag. — BonieSV, Jun 07 '22 at 06:18

score 72 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 30 '14 at 10:02

72

This is a classical error... it's the other way around:

ln -s Existing-file New-name

so in your case

ln -sv /media/mariajulia/485f3e29-355c-4be3-b80a-1f5abd5604b6/mariajulia/Downloads/saga..doc ~/Documents/saga

should work. Note though:

if ~/Documents/saga exists and is not a directory, you will have the error too;
if ~/Documents/saga exists and is a directory, the symbolic link will be ~/Documents/saga/saga..doc (are you sure about the double dot?)
if ~/Documents/saga does not exists, you symbolic link will be ~/Documents/saga (as it is, no extension).

answered Oct 30 '14 at 10:02

Rmano

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Always remember that the parameter order is as in `cp` – Hagen von Eitzen Oct 30 '14 at 12:18
... as discussed [here](http://superuser.com/q/522287/354511) on Super User. – G-Man Says 'Reinstate Monica' Oct 30 '14 at 15:21
3

My mnemonic for this is "what where", e.g., link what where, move what where... – MicrosoftFree Oct 30 '14 at 18:45
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There's even `cp -s`. – deltab Oct 31 '14 at 03:24
what if that New-name already exists? – KansaiRobot Jul 09 '20 at 06:03
But what if my file doesn't exist... yet? – Jerry Green Oct 09 '21 at 21:32

score 45 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 12 '16 at 05:58

45

I have same error message
when redirecting

ln -s /usr/bin/nodejs /usr/bin/node

from node.js v0.10.25
to node.js v4.2.3
so I look at man ln and use

[OPTION] 
-f, --force
          remove existing destination files

This is work as I expected.

answered Feb 12 '16 at 05:58

Alexander Glulkhovtsev

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i dont actually get your answer/point, what is the whole script you used? I think we have the same problem – theArc Mar 26 '16 at 09:05
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I think what he is suggesting to to add --force to your ln command ln -sv ~/Documents/saga /media/mariajulia/485f3e29-355c-4be3-b80a-1f5abd5604b6/mariajulia/Downloads/saga..doc --force – DropHit Apr 29 '16 at 15:37
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So that'd be `ln -sf` ... – Pathros Nov 01 '18 at 19:38
Thanks, that's what I was looking for – egvo Apr 08 '21 at 18:14

score 22 · Answer 3 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:24

As @Rmano responded in his answer the arguments were in the wrong order. I made the same mistake pretty often too. Thus I found a

Fool-proof way to create symbolic links

First go into the directory where you want to create the link

cd ~/Documents/saga

Then create the link with a single argument.

ln -s /very/long/path/to/target/Downloads/saga..doc

This will create a link to the current directory with the same name as the target.

score 4 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 11 '18 at 23:24

Just to add new information, you can remove the current symlink, then re-create the symlink.

rm  ~/Documents/saga

Then re-create the symlink:

ln -sv /media/mariajulia/485f3e29-355c-4be3-b80a-1f5abd5604b6/mariajulia/Downloads/saga..doc ~/Documents/saga

Hope this helps anyone who still faces 'file exists' error.

score 2 · Answer 5 · answered Feb 15 '18 at 10:00

2

Might be unrelated.
For me the link was dead. Pointing to a non existing folder. When trying to replace it, it would fail with this message. ^ So a simple rm linkName was enough.

answered Feb 15 '18 at 10:00

AdrianH

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What is a "failed to create a symbolic link: file exists" error?

5 Answers5

Fool-proof way to create symbolic links

Linked