Folder Links copying the contents of the link

Discussion of bugs and problems found in Altap Salamander. In your reports, please be as descriptive as possible, and report one incident per report. Do not post crash reports here, send us the generated bug report by email instead, please.
gworley
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Joined: 30 Mar 2006, 04:33

Folder Links copying the contents of the link

Post by gworley »

I just discovered something that I didn't like... With Windows 7 there are massive folder links for legacy purposes -- i.e. "Documents and Settings" is linked to "Users" and "All Users\Application Data" is linked to "AppicationData"... etc.... Because of a virus, I created a clone of my OS drive to an external drive. Once I re-installed Windows 7, I wanted to copy the data off the drive so I created a folder on the new C: drive called restore. And then used Altap Salmander to move all of the files off the "backup" into the the c:\restore folder. I then notice a couple of hours later that all my programs in the start menu was missing. Salamander copied the contents of the link instead of just copying the link. Had to do a system restore to recover from this. How do I prevent Salamander from traversing the links?

Thank you,

George Worley
therube
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Re: Folder Links copying the contents of the link

Post by therube »

32 or 64-bit Windows?
WinXP Pro SP3 or Win7 x86 | SS 2.54
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mdruiter
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Re: Folder Links copying the contents of the link

Post by mdruiter »

I doubt the Windows bitness matters. Salamander just isn't smart enough about all types of "hard links".
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Ether
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Re: Folder Links copying the contents of the link

Post by Ether »

mdruiter wrote:Salamander just isn't smart enough about all types of "hard links".
Actually, junctions (which are used for this) are more like symbolic links. (But I guess you meant "hard" as an opposite for Explorer's .lnk files.)

@gworley, have you noticed if there were any '(5) Access is denied' errors during the backup and/or restore? From what I've seen, traversing these junctions is purposely blocked in the ACL's. These errors are usually a good sign of the unexpected behavior you've described. Anyway, I completely agree that Salamander's not well equipped for copying of junctions (though deleting is handled correctly by unlinking).
Ελληνικά rulez.
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SelfMan
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Re: Folder Links copying the contents of the link

Post by SelfMan »

FYI:
There is a new sysinternals utility Findlinks you might find usefull.
therube
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Re: Folder Links copying the contents of the link

Post by therube »

Or a GUI way, Link Shell Extension (LSE).

And Nirsoft's utility, NTFSLinksView.


> '(5) Access is denied'

That would be expected, normally.
WinXP Pro SP3 or Win7 x86 | SS 2.54
Petr Solin
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Re: Folder Links copying the contents of the link

Post by Petr Solin »

I have fixed this problem, sorry for delay. When Copy or Move finds link (junction point, symlink, or volume mount point), you can choose if you want to follow the link and copy files and directories from link target or if you want to skip link target and just create empty directory. Newly it cannot move content of link and so clear link target, it can only copy content or skip it.

It will be available in beta 3 which will be released this month.
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SvA
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Re: Folder Links copying the contents of the link

Post by SvA »

Petr Solin wrote:it can only copy content or skip it.
Please, also allow to duplicate the link where possible (dependent on volume and file system of target)

The Link Shell Extension homepage has some useful material on this.
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Ether
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Re: Folder Links copying the contents of the link

Post by Ether »

SvA wrote:Please, also allow to duplicate the link where possible
+1
Ελληνικά rulez.
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