Can you change what a symlink points to after it is created?

Solution 1:

Yes, you can!

$ ln -sfn source_file_or_directory_name softlink_name

Solution 2:

AFAIK, no, you can't. You have to remove it and recreate it. Actually, you can overwrite a symlink and thus update the pathname referenced by it:

$ ln -s .bashrc test
$ ls -al test
lrwxrwxrwx 1 pascal pascal 7 2009-09-23 17:12 test -> .bashrc
$ ln -s .profile test
ln: creating symbolic link `test': File exists
$ ln -s -f .profile test
$ ls -al test
lrwxrwxrwx 1 pascal pascal 8 2009-09-23 17:12 test -> .profile

EDIT: As the OP pointed out in a comment, using the --force option will make ln perform a system call to unlink() before symlink(). Below, the output of strace on my linux box proving it:

$ strace -o /tmp/output.txt ln -s -f .bash_aliases test
$ grep -C3 ^unlink /tmp/output.txt 
lstat64("test", {st_mode=S_IFLNK|0777, st_size=7, ...}) = 0
stat64(".bash_aliases", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=2043, ...}) = 0
symlink(".bash_aliases", "test")        = -1 EEXIST (File exists)
unlink("test")                          = 0
symlink(".bash_aliases", "test")        = 0
close(0)                                = 0
close(1)                                = 0

So I guess the final answer is "no".

EDIT: The following is copied from Arto Bendiken's answer over on unix.stackexchange.com, circa 2016.

This can indeed be done atomically with rename(2), by first creating the new symlink under a temporary name and then cleanly overwriting the old symlink in one go. As the man page states:

If newpath refers to a symbolic link the link will be overwritten.

In the shell, you would do this with mv -T as follows:

$ mkdir a b
$ ln -s a z
$ ln -s b z.new
$ mv -T z.new z

You can strace that last command to make sure it is indeed using rename(2) under the hood:

$ strace mv -T z.new z
lstat64("z.new", {st_mode=S_IFLNK|0777, st_size=1, ...}) = 0
lstat64("z", {st_mode=S_IFLNK|0777, st_size=1, ...}) = 0
rename("z.new", "z")                    = 0

Note that in the above, both mv -T and strace are Linux-specific.

On FreeBSD, use mv -h alternately.

Editor's note: This is how Capistrano has done it for years now, ever since ~2.15. See this pull request.

Solution 3:

It is not necessary to explicitly unlink the old symlink. You can do this:

ln -s newtarget temp
mv temp mylink

(or use the equivalent symlink and rename calls). This is better than explicitly unlinking because rename is atomic, so you can be assured that the link will always point to either the old or new target. However this will not reuse the original inode.

On some filesystems, the target of the symlink is stored in the inode itself (in place of the block list) if it is short enough; this is determined at the time it is created.

Regarding the assertion that the actual owner and group are immaterial, symlink(7) on Linux says that there is a case where it is significant:

The owner and group of an existing symbolic link can be changed using lchown(2). The only time that the ownership of a symbolic link matters is when the link is being removed or renamed in a directory that has the sticky bit set (see stat(2)).

The last access and last modification timestamps of a symbolic link can be changed using utimensat(2) or lutimes(3).

On Linux, the permissions of a symbolic link are not used in any operations; the permissions are always 0777 (read, write, and execute for all user categories), and can't be changed.