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Question Summary

I am now unable to upload Linux directories that contain symbolic links into Google Drive. It worked in early December 2022.

I need to know if that is intentional deprecation of this feature by Google, so that I can take steps accordingly, or if it is a defect.

Steps to reproduce

  1. Use a Linux machine.
  2. Open a shell.
  3. mkdir dir1
  4. touch dir1/regfile
  5. ln -s ~/.bashrc dir1/symlink
  6. Use a browser (does not matter but I tried Firefox and Google Chrome).
  7. Open up Google Drive.
  8. Use Upload Folder, and upload the entire dir1
  9. Notice the notification in the bottom right of the browser window that indicates that it uploaded "something" (but keep reading).
  10. In that web browser, double click on the uploaded dir1 folder
  11. See the regfile but see that symlink is missing.

Notice also that the web browser did not give any indication that it was silently ignoring the symbolic links.

I've tried variations of the above to no avail (i.e., symbolic links to files and directories).

The only approach that now works is to upload a single symbolic link to a single directory. But if you have a directory with lots of symbolic links in it, Drive ignores them. That does mean that, if you need to upload a directory that contains symbolic links, then those links are not expanded out to their referent files/directories, but simply ignored.

Note: Using some local copy whereby the symbolic links are expanded on my side, is not an answer to the question I raise below, but is an impractical and inefficient workaround that causes local I/O creating temporary copies of symbolic links.

Note that https://www.howtogeek.com/194431/how-to-sync-any-folder-to-the-cloud-with-symbolic-links/ advertised this feature as working at some point.

Detailed Question

Why? Is this intentional behavior now? If so, can someone point us to some announcement whereby Google decided to disallow uploading of real directories whose contains Linux symbolic links? Or is this just a temporary glitch on the Google side?

bgoodr
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  • I doubt that any file hosting site would/could support non-regular files (e.g. symlinks). Make a tarball. – Tom Yan Jan 01 '23 at 17:48
  • Making a tarball completely defeats the purpose of using Google Drive to upload what I need to upload. That tarball means I have to create a separate tallball and upload it and then delete the tarball which is a waste of extra space and time. – bgoodr Jan 03 '23 at 02:08
  • My question was closed as a duplicate on a answer that was posted 2017. This was working in early December of 2022. The question was not how to make the backup work, but to find out if Google deprecated functionality. I have to assume that Google did deprecate that functionality. So that will be my answer. – bgoodr Jan 03 '23 at 02:13
  • The thing is, given the fact that you are using the web browser to perform the sync/upload, I'm not seeing the point of it uploading the symlink anyway, as assuming you'd download the backup with a browser as well, you'd be getting a zip, which cannot contain symlinks either. – Tom Yan Jan 03 '23 at 03:30
  • The point: The directory that contains the single symbolic link was an example that was intentionally simplified. In the real-world use-case, I have several symbolic links inside that directory. The intended effect is to have Google Drive upload the referents of those links. And yes, when the download occurs later on, indeed a zip file would be created and that zip file would then be downloaded, which is expected and desired. That would be done only when needed, such as recovery from some local hard disk failure. The intent was a backup system. – bgoodr Jan 08 '23 at 06:40

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