Effect on symbolic link when changing volume name

Question

I just wanted to verify this information before I proceed with changing the name of my hard drive. I have 3 partitions of my MBP's internal drive. There is the system partition "Mac HD", a boot camp partition and a data only partition called "Storage". I have quite a few symbolic links on "Mac HD" which point to "Storage", where the data is stored. If I change the name of "Mac HD" and/or "Storage", will the symbolic links update to the new name of the volume automatically? Or, will the change of volume name break the symbolic links so I have to create them all over again? Everything I have read leads me to believe they will update, but I don't want to mess anything up and find out the hard way. A little confirmation would make me feel much better before I make the change.
Thanks,
sterling

Answer 1

etresoft wrote:
I don't want to get off on a tangent about pros and cons of cloning, I just want to plant a seed of worry to review it at a later date. It is one thing to restore a disk image for a kiosk machine, it is something else entirely to restore an image of some machine that has had people using it. Misconfiguration, corrupt filesystems, and failed hard drives are some of the most frequent causes of failures. Having a clone of a system that has just failed for one of those reasons doesn't give me a warm fuzzy. It would be a much better idea to have a procedure (or script) to build a new server from scratch and load it from a backup (not a bitwise clone) of known, good data.
Our computer use is typical. There are only a few employees who use the computers regularly, and a few people others who use it less often. the daily use is mostly for back end management like bookkeeping and processing orders. The rest of the operations are design based, like graphics and documents. We don't have a business like a kiosk where people are all over the computers all day. With deep freeze on the system though, there is no worry about anyone doing anything to the system that would corrupt it. Also, the actual drives with the OS rarely get changed or backed up, because they remain the same for the most part. All of the files that are created like documents, designs, orders and such, are saved to storage. The storage is what I back up frequently, because that's where everything is stored. I may have a false sense of security, but I always thought I was more protected than most, because all of my files are stored on a drive without any operating system. I figured there is very little that can go wrong which could corrupt my data since the drive is data only. I always have 2 backups up both the OS drive and the data storage drive. One is like a daily backup, the other is more like once a week or so update which is kept in the safe. I always verify that the backup by opening a few files on it, but I never really know for sure that everything is safe because I can't open everything! I have no clue how to start a server based system backup like you are talking about, but it sounds like a much safer backup method. A little overkill for use considering we don't do that much on the computers? Maybe, but only because I would have to hire someone to come set it up for me. Maybe it's not so hard as it sounds, but I know I don't have the time to learn how to do something like that myself. I didn't realize the backup techniques I am using are so inferior. I feel like my data is pretty safe, but I guess I can look into other options.
I don't consider it "fun", I consider it a "requirement".
I am a bit of a prepper, okay a lot of a prepper. I am prepared for just about anything that can come my way. I do not consider testing my preps fun either. I was just saying, I anticipate that there will be some sort of loss when I restore, based on what you're telling me.
Disasters do have a remarkable ability to strike when you are least prepared. There is a logical reason for that. The more prepared you are, the less disastrous the event.
Agreed, 100%. That's why we're talking about it. I was starting to think that I was over thinking it! Clearly I'm not the only one!
Interesting. Unfortunately, the symbolic link method is pretty invasive because it requires those links to be up and functioning before the clone. A better solution would be to identify all those files, and have a launchd script that replaces the original files with either modified versions or links at system boot time.
With deep freeze, the symlinks are re-created every time I boot, even if they are broken before shutdown. So, it's pretty safe as long as they work before I freeze the system. I also have the two backups in case something goes wrong. I'm confident the links work. And the worst thing that can go wrong if they break is that I have to re-create the broken ones. either way, the data that is linked is still on my storage drive and both of my backups. The only thing I wouldn't be able to recover would be the symbolic link itself.
You need to think of this in terms of the file system. The "name" of a volume doesn't really mean anything. What matters is the mount point. The mount point, however, depends on a particular hardware configuration. You could control it better with some clever mounting scripts, but it sure seems like there is a much easier way to accomplish your ultimate goal.
I guess you're saying I could get by without deep freeze, and that it complicated things. Yes, it does. I am always trying to find workarounds because of it. However, I like the fact that my computer is the same every time I turn it on no matter what someone has done to it.
You have extensive control over your mount points.
I will have to look into this, because if I can get the firewire clone to run with the symlinks in place, I could have a fully working system with nothing more than a restart of the computer.
That, I don't know. Restoring a disk image that has embedded symbolic links to another drive is a fragile solution. You know what files you need to symlink, write a script that will set up the links at boot time - or at any time. Exactly what files are these? I strongly think there is an even easier solution lurking around. Why are you so concerned about retaining user data through restarts? Why are you even restarting?
There's actually not as many as I thought. I have symlinked data and prefs from mail, ical, address book, blackberry desktop. Then, some document folders. I could cut a lot of these down by linking my entire documents folder and building my hierarchy within that, but I've built my own which is neatly organized into the 4 departments of our business. It's really not that much. The only thing is that my mail, ical and address book won't work on the clone, because they are dependent on the simlinks. Everything else is just files that I would access directly from the storage drive anyway, so no loss there!
Wow! I made it through here! I'll review over the ideas you recommended and see if I can actually implement any of them myself. My guess is, I don't have the skills to pull them off. I'll look into it though. thanks for your time, and I will let you know what happens.