samba - Jun 2005 - symbolic link problem

Hi All,

        I'm having some annoying problems with symbolic links. I'm not
        certain they relate to samba but hopefully sone here can help
        anyway.

       I have a linux ( Mandrake 10.1 ) machine sharing various directories
       ( samba 3.0.7 ) with a network of linux ( also MDK 10.1 ) and windows
       machines.

       Within the shared directories are a number of symbolic links to
       files both inside and outside the shared directory ( follow symlinks
       and wide links are both set to yes )

       accessing these directories from a windows client all is well but, when
       I try to access them from Linux, the symbolic links do not work.
       After an hour or two of confusion I realised that it is looking for the
       linked directory on the client machine rather than the server.

       So for example ,on the client, when in directory /mnt/server1/dir1
       there is a symlink to a directory on server1 ( ln -s /home/fred fred ).
       if I do 'cd fred' it fails because /home/fred does not exist on
the
       client.

       Of course on server1 typing 'cd fred' works.

       Am I making some stupid error here in expecting it to look on the
       server?

                                          cheers,

                                               Jeremy

Jeremy wrote on 06/29/2005 05:38:11 AM:
>  Hi All,
> 
>         I'm having some annoying problems with symbolic links. I'm
not
>         certain they relate to samba but hopefully sone here can help
>         anyway.
> 
>        I have a linux ( Mandrake 10.1 ) machine sharing various 
directories
>        ( samba 3.0.7 ) with a network of linux ( also MDK 10.1 ) and 
windows
>        machines.
> 
>        Within the shared directories are a number of symbolic links to
>        files both inside and outside the shared directory ( follow 
symlinks
>        and wide links are both set to yes )
> 
>        accessing these directories from a windows client all is wellbut, 
when
>        I try to access them from Linux, the symbolic links do not work.
>        After an hour or two of confusion I realised that it is looking 
for the
>        linked directory on the client machine rather than the server.
> 
>        So for example ,on the client, when in directory 
/mnt/server1/dir1
>        there is a symlink to a directory on server1 ( ln -s /home/fred 
fred ).
>        if I do 'cd fred' it fails because /home/fred does not exist
on
the
>        client.

You've described your problem right there - linux clients have no access 
to server:/home. If client:/home is empty and not used for local client 
storage and you deem server:/home is okay for everyone to access on the 
clients, nfs mount server:/home on client:/home.

What I've found to be easy on the users is to map the smb share to drive 
X:, then make an automount point /X on the linux boxes that mounts the 
same stuff. This way, "X" represents the same data to windows &
linux
users. Soft links & automount maps fill in any complicated directory 
schemes. 



-----------------------------------------------------
toby bluhm
philips medical systems, cleveland ohio
tobias.bluhm@philips.com
440-483-5323