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I'm attempting to download project files that contain many symbolic links in many different directories. Filezilla properly downloads files and directories but responds with error when trying to download symlinks to local.

550 Can't open [filename]: No such file or directory

Since there are many symlinks in many directories, what is the best way to: 1. copy/download all symlinks 2. recreate all symlinks

Thanks.

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Filezilla properly downloads files and directories but responds with error when trying to download symlinks to local.

550 Can't open [filename]: No such file or directory

Actually, this is not Filezilla producing the error but Filezilla is just showing the error message from the FTP server. It is likely that the symlink does not resolve to an existing file and the server is therefore unable to provide the file. This can happen since symlinks are just a reference by name, where the named target might exist or not. It can also be that the symlink points to some file outside the root of the FTP server which makes it also impossible for the FTP server to provide the file.

Whatever the reason is: it is an error produced at the server side and you can do nothing in the client to resolve the error.

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  • It can also be because of ownership/permissions, where the FTP server running under user X is either chrooted or not able to read files owned by various users (any user can symlink to any other files, but then it does not mean it can necessarily read it).
    – Patrick Mevzek
    Commented Jul 3, 2019 at 19:01
  • @PatrickMevzek: I would expect a "Permission denied" (error number EPERM from the system call) then and not a "No such file or directory" (error number ENFILE) which is shown here. Anyway, the main point of my answer stays in that there is nothing which can be done at the client.
    – Steffen Ullrich
    Commented Jul 3, 2019 at 19:04
  • I was expected you to say so... ;-) however from experience I know that in cases like that the error messages might not be taken too strictly (because it is not directly from the OS to the user, it goes through both the FTP server and FTP client so anything can happen there), and they sometimes cover more cases, so I was just adding some ideas for the poster to troubleshoot. It happens also that people are using chroots or equivalent in which cases it is easy to create dangling symlinks without ever realising. And we are not even speaking about (Linux) namespaces...
    – Patrick Mevzek
    Commented Jul 3, 2019 at 19:08
  • Patrick and Steffen, thanks for your input. I'll figure out if the files they symlinks point to actually exist. Then I'll check permissions too.
    – 63now
    Commented Jul 4, 2019 at 14:17

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