"Too many symbolic links" but there aren't

Support
1

I’m getting the following errors when running Syncthing (v2.1.2) on a Debian 13 system:-

2026-07-10 11:39:19: Failed to load ignores (error="open /home/chris/.share/.stignore: too many levels of symbolic links" log.pkg=model)

2026-07-10 11:39:19: Failed initial scan (error="loading ignores: open /home/chris/.share/.stignore: too many levels of symbolic links" folder.label=share folder.id=js5va-zt99v folder.type=sendreceive log.pkg=model)

But there’s only one level of symbolic link:-

chris@q957$ cd /home/chris/.share
/home/chris/.share
chris@q957$ ls -l .stignore stignore
lrwxrwxrwx 1 chris chris  8 Jul 10 11:37 .stignore -> stignore
-rw-rw-r-- 1 chris chris 12 Jul 10 11:31 stignore
chris@q957$

So what’s going on? Surely .stignore can be a symbolic link can’t it? I’m sure I’ve seen this as a workaround for .stignore not being synchronized.

2

This is a side effect of a previous security fix. It should probably be fixed. Please feel free to file it on GitHub.

3

Ah, thank you! So, for a change it’s not my fault. :slight_smile: