I have a problem with my system and symbolic links.
cleanlinks / was run on the system and I was unable to stop until it was half way through. Now there are strange things happening (missing symlinks).
Is there someway to undue or repair the system or do I need a fresh install. ( yes I should have a backup 
but it was on the todo list).
OS : openSUSE 11.1 x64
I bit more explanation would have been usefull. I have even no âcleanlinksâ program on my system. I found some documentation with Google. Hope it is the same as you use.
This documentation says that cleanlink removes symlinks where there is no target. (Could be dangerous when you have symlinks to files on a partition that is by change not mounted at the moment 
).
Did you run this as root? (you did not tell).
Who has the problems and what are they? (you did not copy/past any error message).
The man page I found says that a cleanlinks reports on what it does. Did you not keep that listing?
When you did this as root and when important system components arer broken, you have a problem. When it is a particular program that complains, it may help to re-install that package.
Sorry for the incomplete message
Yes the user had root access when the command was run and the directory start point was /. This command âcleanlinksâ finds all dangling symbolic links and removes them.
UnfortunatelyI do not have the history of the run so I donât know what happened exactly (what was removed).
Example of thing gone bad are java and programs reling on java. Reinstalled java but when users logged on the nepomuk service could not use sesame as a backend (missing symbolic link).
Do not know the full extent of the damage. But was hoping there was a way to verify and repair
Found a possible solution. rpm -Va and patience with manual fixing.
First change the root password and donât tell that user. >:)
When it were realy only dangling links, I wonder why that is a problem to a program. IMHO not sound programming.
Wish you succes.
And yes, raise the priority of the Backup Project!