What is a "failed to create a symbolic link: file exists" error?
This is a classical error... it's the other way around:
ln -s Existing-file New-name
so in your case
ln -sv /media/mariajulia/485f3e29-355c-4be3-b80a-1f5abd5604b6/mariajulia/Downloads/saga..doc ~/Documents/saga
should work. Note though:
if
~/Documents/saga
exists and is not a directory, you will have the error too;if
~/Documents/saga
exists and is a directory, the symbolic link will be~/Documents/saga/saga..doc
(are you sure about the double dot?)if
~/Documents/saga
does not exists, you symbolic link will be~/Documents/saga
(as it is, no extension).
I have same error message
when redirecting
ln -s /usr/bin/nodejs /usr/bin/node
from node.js v0.10.25
to node.js v4.2.3
so I look at man ln
and use
[OPTION]
-f, --force
remove existing destination files
This is work as I expected.
As @Rmano responded in his answer the arguments were in the wrong order. I made the same mistake pretty often too. Thus I found a
Fool-proof way to create symbolic links
First go into the directory where you want to create the link
cd ~/Documents/saga
Then create the link with a single argument.
ln -s /very/long/path/to/target/Downloads/saga..doc
This will create a link to the current directory with the same name as the target.