This article discusses the cause of the symbolic link exception and explains how it can be handled.
When running a Job using the Change Journal, you may receive the following exception:
Your job monitors symbolic file links. File changes may not be detected by your job. You must use a Schedule without using a Change Journal to ensure that file changes are processed.
Symbolic links are part of the file system, which allow a folder or file entry to point to a different location—even a different volume. When these are encountered, the Change Journal cannot be used to detect changes.
If a folder or file has a symbolic link, this exception will be reported, and changes to the contents of that folder or file will not be noticed by real-time processing. This issue can be worked around in two different ways:
- The Job in question can be run as a Schedule with Change Journal processing turned off. This will cause the Job to scan each time the Schedule is run and any changes to the symbolic links will be picked up.
- The problem folders or files can be excluded from the Job and separate Jobs setup to synchronize those files in their actual destination, not the symbolic link.
A list of symbolic links can be displayed in a Command Prompt using the command:
Dir /AL /S [pathinquestion]
For example:
Dir /AL /S C:
Data deduplication uses different types of symbolic links that do not cause this problem.