Download .lnk files

Question

Dear users, can you, please, advise how can I download .lnk files (that is shortcuts)? I understand how to skip them, how to "follow" them if the link is actually valid, but if the link is to a non-existing file it becomes a problem. I need to download it as a standard file. SO... How can I download .lnk as a file? Using SFTP.

Comments

Also, I've noticed that in some cases even if links are set to be skipped and a link is for a non-existing file it still tries to add it while traversing...

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Could you describe how we can reproduce this problem?

Answer 1

Hello,

*.lnk files are in fact "normal" files which are treated in a special way by Windows applications. The structure of the file contains information about the Windows shortcut.

It depends on the SFTP server, whether it will actually treat the *.lnk file as a link or simply as a file (the latter is much more probable).

Even testing a Windows based SFTP server (Bitvise) - we can see that Bitvise does not "understand" .lnk shortcuts and simply treats the .lnk as a file. And for SFTP servers running on Unix systems the *.lnk does not have a meaning.

So if you want to download the *.lnk file as a file, it should be enough to write:

Using sftp As New Rebex.Net.Sftp
    ' connect to a server
    sftp.Connect(hostname)
    ' authenticate
    sftp.Login(username, password)

    ' download a file
    sftp.Download("/MyData/shortcut.lnk", "C:\MyData")

    ' disconnect (not required, but polite)
    sftp.Disconnect()
End Using

However if you want to download the file to which the Windows shortcut points, you would have to write a *.lnk parser of your own, find what is the item to which the shortcut points, and then download the linked file using the code above.

Comments

Turns out it's a server issue. Disregard the fact that shortcut interpretation is disabled it tries to convert .lnk files and I get errors like MediaCenterShortcut.lnk/MediaCenterShortcut.lnk: open for read: no such file or directory That is .lnk filename gets duplicated.

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I'm gonna report this to server developers, but if anyone has an idea how to work around this through Rebex - would be much appreciated.

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Thank you for reporting back to us. However, we do not have an idea how to work around this issue with Rebex... Sorry.