Linux Relative File Path/Location

I realize there are two options for establishing relative file paths in Blender (File/UserPreferences/File/RelativePaths and File/ExternalData/MakeAllPathsRelative) but I’ve been burned by problems with relative file paths within various applications working across multiple computers too often to feel very safe. I use ubuntu Linux (Xubuntu actually) for all my work but I’m still a Linux noob.

I’d like to define one identical path on multiple computers that references different locations on different computers. Like this:

Computer A: ./media/example = ./home/Brad/Documents/Data
Computer B: ./media/example = ./media/Bob/ExternalDrive/Data

It doesn’t have to be in media either. Just any definable path.

I thought it sounded like environmental variables were what I was looking for and I’ve been researching those off and on for months but I have never been able to get GUI applications like Blender to recognize them. It could be I’m doing something wrong or it could be environmental variables aren’t intended for this sort of thing. Do any Linux users have any ideas for accomplishing anything similar to this? Thank you.

Hi, I hope I understand correctly, you can may work with symlink.
make dir /media/example on every computer and link on a /home/Brad/Documents/Data to it and on computer b /media/Bob/ExternalDrive/Data to /media/example.
To make a symlink type in terminal “ln -s /media/example /home/Brad/Documents/Data” without quotes for example.
In Blender you can use /media/example for output and/or in UP > file > textures for example.
Google linux symlink for more info, it is very useful.

Cheers, mib

Perfect! I knew there was a simple solution in Linux! Thank you mib2berlin!

I got a little stuck when I thought I was supposed to create both directories; the one in media and the one at the destination. That made it start putting linked subdirectories inside the directory I was intending to be the real link. Once I figured out that the destination directory would be created by the “ln” command and I should only create the directory in media beforehand it worked fine.

Then I had to change the permission of the new destination directory to be able to use it.

sudo mkdir /media/symlink01_largefiles01
sudo ln -s /media/symlink01_largefiles01 /home/me/Documents/symlink01_putLargeFilesInHere
sudo chown me /home/me/Documents/symlink01_putLargeFilesInHere

It’s rare when terminal commands make sense to me! Thank you again mib2berlin!