I am working on a group of Bash shell scripts and have one of the scripts check if an update is needed. If so, it needs to copy files from my computer to others. In Snow Leopard I can just do something like.
account=$(whoami)
cp "/Users/Sleepykrooks/Library/Services/Program" "/Users/$account/Library/Services/Program"
But with Mountain Lion, even though the full path still would look like this, using the same thing leads to an error of not finding the folder or file it's looking for. However it does work if you use something like.
cp "/Library/Services/Program" "/Library/Services/Program"
This is where I am unsure how to use my path to copy my updated files to another user's path.
Thank you for the help.
When you copy a folder in Unix, you usually need the -R flag. (See the cp manpage).
cp -R "/Users/Sleepykrooks/Library/Services/Program" "/Users/$account/Library/Services/Program"
Or, using the BASH shortcut of ~ for home directory:
cp -R ~Sleepykrooks/Library/Services/Program ~/Library/Services/Program
Normally, you should not be touching the /Library directory or the user's ~/Library directory on the Mac. And, you should never touch anything under /System unless you can stare into a TV camera and say in an absolutely serious tone "I'm a professional. Don't try this at home."
Related
I use WSL almost exclusively, and only switch to main windows for browsing and running Windows native programs. I have a git repository located at /mnt/c/myrepo. In order to "install" the code inside /mnt/c/myrepo I need to move it to /mnt/c/otherlocation/renamed. Instead of executing cp -r /mnt/c/myrepo /mnt/c/otherlocation/renamed every time I do a git pull from /mnt/c/myrepo, I would like to symlink /mnt/c/myrepo to /mnt/c/otherlocation/renamed. However when I do this, the program which consumes /mnt/c/otherlocation/renamed isn't able to view the "contents" of renamed as a directory.
I have been all over the WSL github repo and issue tracker trying to find a solution to this issue. I see a lot of exclamations about how symlinks "just work". I have enabled every Windows 10 developer feature I can find, I even followed some reddit thread where someone claimed that purchasing Pengwin and creating a symlink from Pengwin would ensure this compatibility, but I still can't seem to make this work.
The basic usage I need, is allow me to view "renamed" as a directory from windows, or for windows to recognize the symlink as a symlinked directory.
from wsl:
ln -s /mnt/c/myrepo /mnt/c/otherlocation/renamed
from windows:
open file explorer
navigate to c:\otherlocation
open mydir and view the contents as if it were a native directory
How do I do this?
Do the symlink in Windows, in cmd.exe:
mklink /d C:\otherlocation\renamed C:\myrepo
It doesn't make sense creating the symlinks in WSL if both directories are in Windows.
This symlink will work in WSL as well.
The solution to this problem is simply to use the relative path when declaring the link. If you want to link from windows to windows, you should relatively path from the current directory and then you can link anywhere you wish.
From the example, instead of this:
ln -s /mnt/c/myrepo /mnt/c/otherlocation/renamed
Do this:
cd /mnt/c/otherlocation
ln -s ../../myrepo ./renamed
I think I know the answer to this one but I'll ask anyway.
I created a symlink to a dir on a different disk. A script (which I have no control over) will "rm -rf *" in the dir that has this symlink. It deletes the symlink OK, but leaves the target dir on the other directory. I expected this but want to make sure that there's no way I can create the symlink somehow to behave like a hard link in terms of making "rm -rf " recursively delete the dir on the other disk. -T looked kind of promising, but didn't pan out. Again, I have no control over the rm command execution. But I do create the target dir on the other disk, plus I create the symlink to it..
Thanks in advance!
What you are essentially asking is can a hard link be created across file systems. The answer is, they cannot. This tutorial confirms this:
An important thing to note about hard links is that they only work on the current file system. You can not create a hard link to a file on a different file system. To do that you need to use symbolic links, Section 1.4.3.
As you seem to already understand, removing a softlink will have no effect on the the thing it is linked to. This is true for hardlinks as well.
First of all, I would like to apologize if I'm on the wrong stackexchange network, and secondly, sorry if I'm overlooking something simple.
I was moving files from my old hard drive from an old PC when I came across several password protected ZIP Files. However, since those files were a bit old, I forgot the passwords already. I tried every password I could come up with but I still came up empty. After several google searches, I found this tool/utility for Mac OS X that could help me. So I go to the downloads page and download the Mac OSX utility tool and the source code.
However, I am having problems executing the make command for the file. It says on the downloads page:
If you are using linux or another unix, you need to download the source code, uncompress it and type "make" to compile the utility.
So far, what I've tried is
$make /Users/myname/Downloads/aapr-0.01-source/Makefile
I have also tried the other files in the source folder but nothing worked. After that, I'm pretty much blank. I tried double clicking the aapr file in the utility download for Mac (which is a Unix Executable) and it opens a new terminal window displaying the commands and such. Also, doing $aapr [options] [filename] only shows me -bash: aapr: command not found. I also updated XCodes command line tools.
Sorry if I'm missing out on something very basic, I don't usually use the terminal on the OS X.
Try running
cd /Users/myname/Downloads/aapr-0.01-source
make
A Makefile contains rules for building files from other files but it is based on paths and contents, etc. which depend on your current location. So generally you need to be in the directory of the project for it to work.
Edit (copied from my comment):
To execute a command from a specific location (that isn't in the normal $PATH) you need to specify a path for it. So something like /bin/bash or ./aapr (where ./ means the current directory).
I used to use Ubuntu
most of time, the command are same as Ubuntu
But there is a command annoys me.
it is cp (copy command)
because I often type cp -a FOLDER/ target
to copy a file , however , the command will copy all the folder under FOLDER/ but not including FOLDER/ itself.
I know I can get what I want by using cp -a FOLDER target (without the slash in the tail)
it easily to misuse the command.
Is there any way to change the behavior, thanks
The command cp is a program in /bin so you could rename the cp command to another file, such as main_cp.exe and create a batch file (script) of your own called cp, which changes the call from what you type to what is actually required and then calls main_cp.exe.
However, if you're going to be using OSX a lot and perhaps on other people's machines, learning to train yourself to just not type the slash is probably going to be better in the long term.
Looking for a solution to quickly navigate to long paths in a shell (particularly Max OS X Terminal.app).
Say my path is ~/This/Is/A/Really/Long/Path/That/I/Would/Rather/Not/Type/Frequently
Instead of cd ~/This/Is/A/....
I would like to be able to store favorites/bookmark directories so I could do "cd myPath"
Are there any binaries or tools available to do something like this?
I've found the packages 'Apparix' and 'Goto' which together make the stuff dreams are made of for us terminal junkies.
Naturally, I had trouble installing Apparix, but I figured it out in the end.
How To Install Apparix on Mac OS X:
Download the tarball from Apparix's homepage.
Unpack the tarball, cd to the unpacked folder.
Run this command ./configure --prefix=$HOME/local && make && make install.
Run man apparix, scroll down to the heading BASH-style functions, copy everything within that section (delimited with ---) and paste it into ~/.bash_profile.
That's it. You should now have Apparix up and running on OS X (further install info and usage is on Apparix's homepage).
Another solution is to use Bashmarks, which allows you to this
$ cd ~/This/Is/A/Really/Long/Path/That/I/Would/Rather/Not/Type/Frequently
$ s shortname # save current path as `shortname`
$ cd /
$ g shortname # cd to ~/This/Is/A/Really/Long/Path/That/I/Would/Rather/Not/Type/Frequently
You can use aliases (stick them in your ~/.bash_profile if you want them to always load)
alias cd_bmark1='cd ~/This/Is/A/Really/Long/Path/That/I/Would/Rather/Not/Type/Frequently'
Then use by just typing
cd_bmark1
into the console
I know you already found an answer that worked for you, but a couple of more lightweight suggestions that might help others looking for similar things
If your directories are relatively fixed, just long and far away from each other, you can use the CDPATH environment variable to add directories to the search path when typing the "cd" command. If the directory name you try to cd to isn't in the current directory, the other entries in your CD path will also be looked at (and it's also tab complete aware, at least in bash and zsh).
Switching to zsh rather than bash and using the excellent directory stacks abilities. With it, you can maintain a history of directories that you've visited, view the history with the "dh" alias, and easily switch to a directory by using quick shortcuts (ex: cd -3 to switch to the 3rd directory in your history stack).
Why not having a symlink ?
ln -s ~/This/Is/A/Really/Long/Path/That/I/Would/Rather/Not/Type/Frequently bmark
cd bmark
I use to.sh daily to create and navigate bookmarked paths in bash. It supports tag autocompletion and the ability to easily add/remove bookmarks.
https://github.com/Grafluxe/to.sh
Full disclosure, I wrote this tool :)