samba - Jan 2025 - Can a macOS (Posix) client see symlinks on FreeBSD server as symlinks on client?

On 2025-01-06 01:49, Kees van Vloten via samba wrote:
>
> Op 06-01-2025 om 10:39 schreef Rowland Penny via samba:
>> On Sun, 5 Jan 2025 22:43:23 -0800
>> Jim DeLaHunt via samba <samba at lists.samba.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Hello, Samba folks:
>>>
>>> Is there a setting I could invoke, either on my server's Samba
>>> configuration or on my macOS smbfs configuration, which would make
>>> the hundreds of legacy symbolic links on the server's Posix
file
>>> system appear as symbolic links on the macOS client?
>>> ...[elided]...
>>>
>> ...[elided]...
>
> ...[elided]...
> In the case presented above, there is another unknown, namely how is 
> the implementation in the macOS client regarding symlinks and reparse 
> points?
Kees, thank you for the reply.

How does the macOS client behave?? That is a great question. I have not 
found good documentation on the subject. Apple has posted some Samba 
code publicly at
<https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/smb/blob/main/kernel/smbfs/smbfs_smb.c>
and the rest of that repository.? I have not tried to read through it to 
figure out exactly how it behaves. And, I don't know for sure that the 
source code there was what was compiled to make the executables on my 
macOS machine.

Best regards,
 ??? ?Jim DeLaHunt

On Mon, 6 Jan 2025 22:15:57 -0800
Jim DeLaHunt via samba <samba at lists.samba.org> wrote:
> 
> On 2025-01-06 01:49, Kees van Vloten via samba wrote:
> >
> > Op 06-01-2025 om 10:39 schreef Rowland Penny via samba:
> >> On Sun, 5 Jan 2025 22:43:23 -0800
> >> Jim DeLaHunt via samba <samba at lists.samba.org> wrote:
> >>
> >>> Hello, Samba folks:
> >>>
> >>> Is there a setting I could invoke, either on my server's
Samba
> >>> configuration or on my macOS smbfs configuration, which would
make
> >>> the hundreds of legacy symbolic links on the server's
Posix file
> >>> system appear as symbolic links on the macOS client?
> >>> ...[elided]...
> >>>
> >> ...[elided]...
> >
> > ...[elided]...
> > In the case presented above, there is another unknown, namely how
> > is the implementation in the macOS client regarding symlinks and
> > reparse points?
> 
> Kees, thank you for the reply.
> 
> How does the macOS client behave?? That is a great question. I have
> not found good documentation on the subject. Apple has posted some
> Samba code publicly at
>
<https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/smb/blob/main/kernel/smbfs/smbfs_smb.c>
As Apple doesn't use Samba, that isn't Samba code, it is Apples SMB
code.

That is one of your problems, the Samba code is GPLv3 opensourced, the
Apple code is based on old GPLv2 code.

Samba tries to be compatible with Apple SMB via various vfs additions,
but there are probably always going to be corner cases.

Rowland

On Mon, Jan 06, 2025 at 10:15:57PM -0800, Jim DeLaHunt via samba
wrote:
>
>On 2025-01-06 01:49, Kees van Vloten via samba wrote:
>>
>>Op 06-01-2025 om 10:39 schreef Rowland Penny via samba:
>>>On Sun, 5 Jan 2025 22:43:23 -0800
>>>Jim DeLaHunt via samba <samba at lists.samba.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>>Hello, Samba folks:
>>>>
>>>>Is there a setting I could invoke, either on my server's
Samba
>>>>configuration or on my macOS smbfs configuration, which would
make
>>>>the hundreds of legacy symbolic links on the server's Posix
file
>>>>system appear as symbolic links on the macOS client?
>>>>...[elided]...
>>>>
>>>...[elided]...
>>
>>...[elided]...
>>In the case presented above, there is another unknown, namely how is 
>>the implementation in the macOS client regarding symlinks and 
>>reparse points?
>
>Kees, thank you for the reply.
>
>How does the macOS client behave?? That is a great question. I have 
>not found good documentation on the subject. Apple has posted some 
>Samba code publicly at
><https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/smb/blob/main/kernel/smbfs/smbfs_smb.c>
>and the rest of that repository.? I have not tried to read through it 
>to figure out exactly how it behaves. And, I don't know for sure that 
>the source code there was what was compiled to make the executables on 
>my macOS machine.
Apple is not planning to implement the SMB3+POSIX extentions
as far as I know. This means they will keep using MFsymlinks
against Windows and Samba. "Real" symlinks can be seen as
reparse points as this is in the SMB3 protocol but without
POSIX extensions they will not be seen as symlinks.