cut from sag:
Why you should prevent symbolic links to files?
You should prevent CIFS clients from following symbolic links that point to files because Data ONTAP can update the wrong files. This problem occurs because many CIFS client applications perform operations such as writing to a temporary file, renaming the original file to a backup name, then renaming the temporary file to the original name.
If the original file was targeted directly by a symbolic link, this sequence of operations would result in the file being stored in the directory where the symbolic link was, and the renamed symbolic link pointing at the original file rather than to the updated file.
"Bond, Andrew" wrote:
I'm not aware of any reason to avoid links to files. However, current CIFS security does not allow CIFS clients to follow links that leave the share on which they originate, so that it is not possible to follow a link to another volume (unless that link is to another share, which is why it works for homedirs). This is being tracked by BURT 15808.
If you want multiple volumes (or filers) to be accessed from a single point, you can use DFS to achieve this for CIFS clients.
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