Writing this mostly because it’s just about impossible to find a simple answer to the question of “how to create a symbolic link” in Google without wading through page after page of ads. Yes, I know I’m being a hypocrite as I’ve got ads as well – but the placement and number are hopefully less offensive!
Command Syntax
If you need one file to be available in multiple locations in Linux, you can create a symbolic link to make this happen. The command syntax is:
ln -s {actual file location} {symbolic link location}Example
After managing to hose my Node.js install for Homebridge again, I decided the quickest fix would be to just install Node.js directly from the system package manager. Once installed, I figured I could convince Homebridge to use the system version of Node.js, rather than having its own.
First, I deleted the broken built-in Node executable: sudo rm /opt/homebridge/bin/node
Then I installed the system version of Node.js, which places the Node executable at: /usr/bin/node
Because Homebridge expects the Node executable to be available at the original location, I needed to create a link from the system version to the location it wanted:
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/node /opt/homebridge/bin/node
(To get it working I had to change ownership of the symbolic link to the Homebridge user, but that’s a topic for another post!)