Change the name of a symlink directory without breaking it?

Question

I'm trying to go through the process of changing a symlink on ubuntu 14.04 LTS without breaking anything. Do I simply rename the folder and change the way the virtual hosts file points to the directory? In order to avoid running into a bunch of problems and breaking the server, I'm wondering if anyone has done this moothly before?

Answer 1

I was looking to rename all the link that contain a given folder name that im going to rename.

So my intent is to propagate the renaming to all symlink target path pointed there.

I created renamer.sh with this code:

#!/bin/bash

where=$1
what=$2

# find the link with folder having given name
find $where -type l -ilname */*$what*/* 2>/dev/null

# give the target path of each listed link
find $where -type l -ilname */*$what*/* 2>/dev/null | xargs readlink

I wanted to look from / , passing the folder name i want to change being at closer parent folder, so first argument /, second argument :

./renamer.sh / <foldername>

The first find command returns the fullpath of found symlinks.

Then the second find command pipes all the found fullpathes into command readlink that returns the where those symlinks are targeted to.

...

coding a bit more the batch renaming is near...

...

P.S: From Debian 10 Buster I needed to install "readlink" and "findutils"

sudo apt install readlink findutils

Bye

Answer 2

Is the symlink you are trying to change the root folder of your web server? If so, then yes, just create a new folder and point your virtualhost to it.