samba - Feb 2008 - msdfs root / directory structure.

Can I have folders in the msdfs root?
>From the docs I do not see a mention of this and in the past it did
not work for me however with samba-3.0.28 it appears to be working.

img_dfs_root # ls -alR                                                 .:
total 0
drwxrwsr-x 3 root honestbrokers 264 Feb 28 14:11 .
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root          104 Oct 22 10:35 ..
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root honestbrokers  27 Nov 16 16:47 DS1_ImageSpace ->
msdfs:datastore1\ImageSpace
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root honestbrokers  23 Oct 22 11:33 fileserver ->
msdfs:fileserver\Images
-rw-r--r-- 1 root honestbrokers   0 Feb 28 14:11 msdfs:datastore1ImageSpace
-rw-r--r-- 1 root honestbrokers   0 Feb 28 14:11 msdfs:fileserverImages
-rw-r--r-- 1 root honestbrokers   0 Feb 28 14:11 msdfs:fileserverSoftware
drwxr-sr-x 2 root honestbrokers  72 Feb 28 13:53 test

./test:
total 0
drwxr-sr-x 2 root honestbrokers  72 Feb 28 13:53 .
drwxrwsr-x 3 root honestbrokers 264 Feb 28 14:11 ..
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root honestbrokers  25 Feb 28 13:53 software ->
msdfs:fileserver\Software


I have /exports/img_dfs_root set in samba and in XP I do now see the
test folder in the root and if I traverse into that software shows up
and works.


Is this guaranteed to work? Known limitations? I am interested in XP,
win2k3 and possibly linux cifs clients in the future.

John

>From: "John Drescher" <drescherjm@gmail.com>
>To: "Samba Maillist" <samba@lists.samba.org>
>Subject: [Samba] msdfs root / directory structure.
>
>>From the docs I do not see a mention of this and in the past it did
>not work for me however with samba-3.0.28 it appears to be working.

I've done this for a few years with various versions of Samba 3, never
noticed it it not working.

>Is this guaranteed to work? Known limitations? I am interested in XP,
>win2k3 and possibly linux cifs clients in the future.

We're mostly an XP shop (for desktop) and it seems to behave itself.
The usual DFS problems can occur, but the extra levels of sub-directories
don't cause extra problems.

The other thing that Samba can do that I've not seen Windows Server do
is allow you to have multiple shares, each set up as a DFS root. So we
have  (something like)  :-

	\\net
		\user
			\homes
			\mydocs
		\shares
			\finance
				\budgets
			\admin
				\meetings
			\it
				\devel-team
				\support-desk
		\software
			\microsoft
				\office
				\visio
			\adobe
				\reader8
				\illustrator


where 'net' is in fact a NetBios alias.

'user', 'shares', and 'software' are three different
Samba shares, each
with DFS turned on. (i.e. DFS roots)

'homes','mydocs','finance' etc. are all normal
subdirectories.

'budgets','meetings','office' etc are the DFS
(sym-)links.


Works nicely for us.

(and somewhere we have a script to build the whole 'shares' tree by
parsing smb.conf files from across the whole site)



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