If you want to use the symlinks.tranlslations file, I am pretty sure you must use absolute paths
On 6/18/07, Stephen C. Losen scl@sasha.acc.virginia.edu wrote:
I would like to manage the symlinks in use for the whole company at a certain directory depth on our filers (FAS3050 + OnTap 7.2.2). I would like to create the following setup so that users see a single share when they browse the filer via CIFS and FTP but give them access to data spread over more than 1 aggregate, volume and qtree.
Filer_1
Aggregate_1 Data_volume_1 Qtree_1 All_data (single share visible to company) Real_dir_1 Symlnk_Real_dir_2 Symlnk_Real_dir_3 Symlnk_Real_dir_4
Aggregate_2 Data_volume_2 Qtree_2 Real_dir_2 Data_volume_3 Qtree_3 Real_dir_3 Data_volume_4 Qtree_4 Real_dir_4
I am aware that I need to configure the widelinks option. How do I create the symlinks from my admin host (FreeBSD) which mounts all the volumes over NFS for data management purposes? I don't want to use a Windows machine to create the links. My users are Win2K and MacOSX clients and access their data using CIFS and FTP (NFS may be used
later).
I have a number of samba servers with this data directory setup as a single share visible to users but data spread over a number of disks. I use the unix "ln -s" command to create the necessary symlinks on the samba servers.
Feel free to point out what may be glaringly obvious.
"ln -s" is what you need. Unlike NFS where the NFS client follows the symlink, with CIFS on a netapp, the netapp follows the symlink so the symlink must "make sense" to the netapp. The CIFS protocol is not "symlink aware" while NFS is.
In particular, to link to a different volume, you will need to do something like this:
ln -s /vol/othervol/qtree/folder linkname
This symlink may not work on a NFS client because "/vol" may not exist on the NFS client. But the netapp will certainly understand it. I have never done this, so I don't know about any issues regarding access rights.
Within a volume you can try relative paths in your symlink.
ln -s ../../otherqtree/folder linkname
Note that if you ever have multiple filers that you are out of luck because there is no way to symlink to another filer. (Yes, you can do it with NFS because the client can mount both filers and the client follows the symlink, not the netapp.)
There are data virtualization products out there on the market (Acopia Networks, for example: http://www.acopia.com ) that sound kind of like what you want to do, but may be overkill for your installation.
Steve Losen scl@virginia.edu phone: 434-924-0640
University of Virginia ITC Unix Support