unable to delete these old files

[timelessbeing]

M2 Macbook Pro
Sonoma 14.4

I have these old symlinks in my /usr folder: X11, X11R6
I'm pretty sure they were migrated over from an old Mac.

ls -l entries in /usr:

lrwxr-xr-x    1 root  wheel    25B Feb 28 20:05 X11@ -> ../private/var/select/X11
lrwxr-xr-x    1 root  wheel    25B Feb 28 20:05 X11R6@ -> ../private/var/select/X11

xquartz/x11 is gone. The links point nowhere. The targets don't exist. I want to delete them.
I have disabled SIP, but I am unable to delete or do anything with them:

rm: /usr/X11: Read-only file system
unlink: /usr/X11: Read-only file system
chown: /usr/X11: Read-only file system

I just want them gone. How do I get rid of them?

 

[Nermal]

Those aren't migrated files, but are part of the OS. I'm not sure how you'd go about deleting them, but I wouldn't recommend it.

Edit: But you're right that they don't point anywhere. Strange...

 

[timelessbeing]

Are you sure? I thought Apple stopped shipping xquartz with MacOS a long time ago.
According to this user, it's a "notorious" issue:

`csrutil disable` command FAILED. The OS … - Apple Community

discussions.apple.com

If it really is supposed to be there it should be easy enough to replace.
If I could just figure out how to mount the right volume as read-write ...

 

[timelessbeing]

From recovery mode, I remounted /Volumes/Macintosh HD as read-write, and was able to delete the symlinks, but they came back after a reboot. Maybe I got the wrong volume, or I seem to recall having to "bless" folders in the past to make changes "stick", but I'm a little reluctant to push my luck.

It's so weird to have broken links like that. Seems like it could cause issues

 

[timelessbeing]

I just reinstalled xquartz, so at least the symlink resolves now.

 

[Bigwaff]

Seems like it could cause issues

The reason the symlinks came back is due to how macOS uses a cryptographically signed version of the operating system. The volume you mounted read-only and mucked with was snapshot of the SSV system. On reboot, the snapshot is replaced with pristine snapshot.

What issues do you foresee with the “dead” symlinks?

 

[HDFan]

I've got them and they don't seem to be doing any harm. Why worry about them?

 

[adrianlondon]

On my system (MacOS 14.4 beta) ...

/usr/X11 links to ../private/var/select/X11
/private/var/select/X11 links to /opt/X11
/opt/X11 exists.

What a mess! But it is what it is.

While playing, loads of links up and down eventually lead to:
/usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/2.6.0/universal-darwin23

Which is empty

 

[timelessbeing]

The reason the symlinks came back is due to how macOS uses a cryptographically signed version of the operating system. The volume you mounted read-only and mucked with was snapshot of the SSV system. On reboot, the snapshot is replaced with pristine snapshot.

What issues do you foresee with the “dead” symlinks?

I figured that was the case.
The question is, are the files part of the original OS, or did they become part of the snapshot after the migration process.
If something tried to use X11 and use a dead symlink, it could fail and cause me problems later.

 

[timelessbeing]

I've got them and they don't seem to be doing any harm. Why worry about them?

Thank you for verifying.
Because I don't want to be hunting for problems later. I absolutely hate tracking down compile failures.

I put xquartz back so it's no longer an issue.

 

[timelessbeing]

/opt/X11 exists.

then you must have installed it, which I ended up doing

 

[adrianlondon]

then you must have installed it, which I ended up doing

Aha - I might have done. I've had this laptop for 4 years so have probably installed lots of things I've since forgotten about. If it's related to some quartz graphic thing (which it sounds like it is), I probably installed it as part of trying to get a document to show properly in LateX a couple of years ago.

 

[Bigwaff]

The question is, are the files part of the original OS, or did they become part of the snapshot after the migration process.

I have these symlinks in /usr directory and I've never installed X11. Based on the ownership and date, these are part of the system install and baked into the SSV.

❯ ls -la /usr | grep X
lrwxr-xr-x    1 root  wheel     25 Feb  2 12:19 X11 -> ../private/var/select/X11
lrwxr-xr-x    1 root  wheel     25 Feb  2 12:19 X11R6 -> ../private/var/select/X11

... and I've never encountered an issue. No need to install X11 package just to make these symlinks point to something, especially when you are never going to X-display any Unix programs.

 

[timelessbeing]

I will probably end up using it anyway since I mess around with imagemagick and other CLI tools

 

[bogdanw]

/private/var/select/X11 and /private/var/select/X11 are not present in a clean Sonoma install.
Only /private/var/select/sh exists and points to /bin/bash
/private/var/select/ is not on the system volume, is on the data volume.
/var is protected by SIP. With SIP disabled, I can write in /private/var/select/.

 

[timelessbeing]

I know all that.
What about the files in my question, /usr/X11 and /usr/X11R6 ?

 

[Bigwaff]

What about the files in my question, /usr/X11 and /usr/X11R6 ?

The symlinks may be part of system volume (symlinks are files) but the symlinks point to a directory that is not. That is what @bogdanw is saying.

 

[bogdanw]

What about the files in my question, /usr/X11 and /usr/X11R6 ?

/usr/X11 and /usr/X11R6 are broken aliases included in Sonoma. They are on the system volume and can not be deleted.

 

[timelessbeing]

Good to know. Thanks.