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Find broken symbolic links

harmlessFilesystemalle
Adjust the values, the command updates live
user@server
find /var/www/vhosts/example.com -xtype l -ls

-xtype l matches symlinks that cannot be resolved because their target was deleted or moved. The output shows the link and its stored target. Common after migrations, release switches or removed PHP versions.

Note: Links to targets without read permission also show up here. If in doubt, run the command as root.

Also searched as

  • find broken symlinks linux
  • symlink points to nothing
  • find dangling symlinks
  • find orphaned links

Related one-liners

All in Filesystem

List all symbolic links with their targets

$find /var/www/vhosts/example.com -type l -printf '%p -> %l\n'
harmlessFilesystem

Calculate the total size of all files of one type

$find /var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs/wp-content/uploads -type f -iname '*.mp4' -printf '%s\n' | awk '{s+=$1; n++} END {printf "%d Dateien, %.1f MB\n", n, s/1048576}'
harmlessFilesystem

Create or repoint a symbolic link

$ln -sfn -- /var/www/vhosts/example.com/releases/2026-10-10 /var/www/vhosts/example.com/current
cautionFilesystem

Delete empty directories recursively

$find /var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs -mindepth 1 -type d -empty -print -delete
destructiveFilesystem

Delete files older than X days

$find /var/backups/example.com -type f -name '*.tar.gz' -mtime +30 -print -delete
destructiveFilesystem

Find a file by name

$find /var/www/vhosts -iname '*wp-config*' 2>/dev/null
harmlessFilesystem

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