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I'm getting a very weird problem.

I have successfully mounted an sftp directory using gio mount (previously known as gvfs-mount).

I then try to create a symbolic link to this directory as ln -sv /path/to/mounted/drive. The output suggests the correct path was linked to

However, when I perform an ls -l command, it shows the link as broken, and on closer inspection, it looks as if the colon (i.e. :) character has been replaced by some weird chicken-like symbol, as shown in the image.

enter image description here

I'm completely stumped. I've performed this procedure on other computers (admittedly linux mint, not ubuntu) in the past, and it's always worked. No idea what that chicken thing is about.

Has anyone encountered this before, and has any idea how to solve it?

EDIT: This is the character, if it helps:  . It seems to be a compound character, composed over three lines ...

enter image description here

Copying it into charmap shows it is the U+F022 character in the Common script category:


General Character Properties

In Unicode since: 1.1
Unicode category: Other, Private Use

Various Useful Representations

UTF-8: 0xEF 0x80 0xA2
UTF-16: 0xF022

C octal escaped UTF-8: \357\200\242
XML decimal entity: 
Tasos Papastylianou
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1 Answers1

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AFAIK, gvfs's are not meant to be accessed (or symlinked) directly. That is why you need gio list <location> -ud. Compare what you get by listing the contents with

  1. ls /run/user/...,
  2. gio list google-drive://<your name>@gmail.com/,
  3. gio list google-drive://<your name>@gmail.com/ -ud.

To setup a symlink you would follow this procedure.

Related:

  1. How can I access my Google Drive via the command line with Gnome Online Accounts?
sancho.s ReinstateMonicaCellio
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  • Hi Sancho, thanks for the answer. Unfortunately I'm no longer on ubuntu so I cannot test this, and my linux mint does not reproduce the original problem, so I can only upvote. Having said that, this doesn't sound like it would completely solve the original problem, since the main problem was not how to list properly, but that after symlinking, the link appeared broken, not just 'scrambled'. Your gvfs linking approach in the other answer doesn't suggest something more on this (other than, if wasn't broken, maybe the scrambled link might have worked). – Tasos Papastylianou Sep 21 '21 at 21:07