From owner-toasters@mathworks.com Thu Jun 22 00:16:31 2000 To: toasters@mathworks.com Subject: Re: Filer (F740) with CIFS and NT Terminal Server Edition (Metafr ame) Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2000 15:14:48 -0400 From: Steve Losen scl@sasha.acc.virginia.edu Precedence: bulk

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If you make absolute links (beginning with a leading slash) you need to consider how the filer is going to resolve those since the UNIX exports and CIFS shares may be coming from different paths. The /etc/symlink.translations file is used to help the filer interpret absolute symbolic links.

If pchome is full of links to another directory on the filer and you use relative links you should be fine. You also need to enable symlinks with the cifs.symlinks.enable option

/vol/vol0/pchome bob -> ../home_systems/bob jim -> ../home_software/jim

/vol/vol0/home_systems bob

/vol/vol0/home_software jim

Dennis Haag

The cifs.symlinks.enable option and the /etc/symlink.translations file aren't necessary here.

When you use the cifs.home_dir directory, you are implicitly defining a bunch of user shares. Essentially the cifs.home_dir directory and its contents is configuration data that is internal to the filer, and the filer understands symlinks.

The cifs.symlinks.enable option and the /etc/symlink.translations file are for handling the situation where a CIFS client tries to access a symlink. CIFS clients don't understand symlinks, so you must configure the filer to either 1) follow the symlink and return what the symlink refers to, or 2) deny access to the symlink.

Note that this is not an issue with NFS because the client follows the symlink, not the server. So when a NFS client accesses a symlink, the filer simply returns it. This is not possible with CIFS where the client does not understand what a symlink is.

Exactly as Steve describes. This does not involve the whole issue of cifs symlinks, so links can be made to home dirs even across qtrees or shares. The links are absolute, not relative, because they are examined by the filer only, not the client.

Moshe

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