I recently upgraded from SLES 10.4 to 11.3. However this occurs whenever there is an update. The updates leave behind symlinks. Currently I must have over 100 of them from the upgrade to 11.3. I use apparmor to check the file system and these symlinks get reported in the output ad nauseum. To make apparmor useful now I have to remove them manually or it’s just too much garbage to read through to be useful.
SUSE/Novell I hope you see this thread and can figure out a way to remove these dead no longer used symlinks when upgrading. If we have programs depending on them, it does little good to leave them when they point to non-existent files. Perhaps a log file placed in /var/log with the symlinks removed so we can track them if needed? That would help. But mostly I really don’t understand why they are left behind. If the OS update knows it’s removing the file, I see little reason it can’t remove symlinks as well.
The most amazing part of this are the links to what should be obvious changes.
Dead symlink detected at /dev/.udev/db/c4:69
What am I supposed to do with these? There are probably 50+ of them.
ls -al c4:69
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 Feb 22 10:45 c4:69 → ttyS5 char/4:69
file ttyS5*
ttyS5*: cannot open `ttyS5*’ (No such file or directory)
Dead symlink detected at /usr/share/doc/packages/ksh/LICENSE
dead link, LICENSE → EPL-v1.0
New link made by me LICENSE → EPL-1.0
Is LICENSE no longer needed? It’s obvious the file name changed to the target so why leave the link? SUSE/Novell I hope you are reading this.
how did you upgrade from SLES 10.4 to 11.3? Did you go the individual steps, or did you install SLES11SP3 right on top of SLES10SP4? (BTW, the “10.4” might be confusing to some, since it’s commonly used with the opensuse versions - it’s preferred to use the “SP” style here).
SUSE/Novell I hope you are reading this
This is a peer support forum, no official SUSE support here. But once we have cleared the details, I’m sure we’ll find a way to forward this info to SUSE. If you want to make sure, you need to open a service request (SR) based on a support contract.
I booted off the 11.3 install disk and chose to upgrade an existing installation. It’s not just this upgrade that leaves behind dead symlinks, it’s any package install which does this. Especially kernel upgrades. These dead symlinks are in /usr/src/linix- ??? Those are probably the worst offenders. If the kernel is upgraded, why keep links here that are 4 or 5 or more versions old? No one is likely to revert to a kernel version that far back.
I booted off the 11.3 install disk and chose to upgrade an existing installation.
your upgrade path is supported (SLES10SP4 to SLES11SP3 via installation media), so you may expect things to work correctly.
it’s any package install which does this. Especially kernel upgrades. These dead symlinks are in /usr/src/linix- ???
It seems to be something unique to your situation, or at least not common to all installations: I have various servers (both created as SLES10SP2 and continuously upgraded, as well as SLES11something installs with upgrades, and SLES11SP3 fresh installs) which don’t exhibit this behavior. It is worth having a detailed look at, so your best move would be to open a service request with SuSE and have a support engineer guide you through the process.