I any case, the bits from MacOS seems to be - for good or ill - slowly but surely falling away. If so, you could unset it with SetFile (which is installed if and when you install the developer tools):Īnd if that's so, and I don't know for sure, then I guess it's just the price one pays for having an "amphibious" OS/filesystem, which is a bit of this and a bit of that.īut since nothing else comes close in terms of use*, complaints from Unix diehards to that effect tend to wash over me now. So my guess would be that that attribute had got set. One attribute there - viz, a - indicates an alias. Maybe this is a Finder attribute? Man page for GetFileInfo: (And actually "aliases" are MacOS stuff Unix, as I understand it, has "symbolic links".) It's probably connected with the old MacOS, which has a curious afterlife inside OS X. You can go there in Terminal, so this is Finder stuff. So, what is the Alias bit? How can I fix this in Terminal? And how does this get messed up in the first place?ĭon't know, but here's my guess. Note that before I fixed with Pathfinder, I was able to access the drive via the Terminal, in /Volumes/name
You can move the alias to a different location on your hard drive and it will still work.I have a USB disk that today could not be opened by Finder: The alias "" can't be opened because the original item can't be found.įound this, downloaded PathFinder, unset the Alias bit, and it seems to working fine now. The new alias will have the same name as the original file or folder, but the icon will include a curved arrow to indicate that it is an alias. The pointer will change to an upward pointing arrow to let you know you’re creating a new alias. You can also access this option by using the Action button at the top of a Finder window.Ī quick way to create an alias is to hold down the Command and Option keys while you drag a file or folder. To create a new alias, control-click (or right-click if you have a two-button mouse) on a file or folder and select Make Alias. You can identify aliases by the small arrow that appears on the lower left corner of its icon. When you delete the alias, the original file it points to is not deleted. It is not an exact copy of the original file. The alias is a small file that takes very little space because it only has information about the location of the original file.
An alias is a pointer to a file or folder on your hard drive.