Symbolic Linking in Mojave

[John Rofrano]

What exactly isn’t working? I’m not running Mojave but I do use symbolics links to move my Garage Band instruments off of my boot SSD. You should have done something similar to this (assuming your external drive is labeled “MyDrive”)

cp -R "/Library/Application Support/GarageBand/Instrument Library" "/Volumes/MyDrive/Instrument Library"
rm -fr "/Library/Application Support/GarageBand/Instrument Library"
ln -s "/Volumes/MyDrive/Instrument Library" "/Library/Application Support/GarageBand/Instrument Library"

The first line copies the contents of source to the target folder. The second line deletes the source folder (this is what frees up the space) and the last line creates the symbolic link from the new folder to the original folder so that it looks like it’s still in the same place. You will probably be prompted for your password to be able to delete from and create a link to the /Library folder. That should do it.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[Andrew Clark]

[John Rofrano] “What exactly isn’t working? I’m not running Mojave but I do use symbolics links to move my Garage Band instruments off of my boot SSD. You should have done something similar to this (assuming your external drive is labeled “MyDrive”)

cp -R “/Library/Application Support/GarageBand/Instrument Library” “/Volumes/MyDrive/Instrument Library”

rm -fr “/Library/Application Support/GarageBand/Instrument Library”

ln -s “/Volumes/MyDrive/Instrument Library” “/Library/Application Support/GarageBand/Instrument Library”

The first line copies the contents of source to the target folder. The second line deletes the source folder (this is what frees up the space) and the last line creates the symbolic link from the new folder to the original folder so that it looks like it’s still in the same place. You will probably be prompted for your password to be able to delete from and create a link to the /Library folder. That should do it.”

** Hi John and thank you for your reply.

Here’s what I did:

I created the Symlink for …

/Library/Audio/Apple\ Loops/Apple/Final\ Cut\ Pro\ Sound\ Effects

The Symlink is created but, for some reason, Software Update thinks that the folder is not there and sends me an update for the contents in the folder that I moved and created a Symlink for. But when I launched FCPX, all the content shows up and operates fine … just as before I did this Symlink-ing.

The new location is on an external SSD, formatted as APFS, connected via USB3.0.

So I decided to try it again. I deleted the Symlink (via Finder), moved the original folder back to its original location, emptied the trash and restarted the computer.

For the second go round, I used an app called SymbolicLinker. It (seemingly) did everything just fine. But again, Software Update did not recognize this.

Both ways worked as they should but … the result of Software Update not recognizing this along with launching FCPX and all the content is showing up and working just as nothing changed … is most baffling.

Sent from an Underwood Typewriter Xs