[linux-cifs-client] interoperability between samba, linux-cifs,cywgin and sfu

[Wagner, Chris (GEAE, CBTS)]

Martin Koeppe wrote:
> A concrete problem on cygwin is that you can create device files, but
> these device files are shown as symlinks instead of as device files
> cygwin$ mkfifo myfifo && ls -l myfifo
> prw-rw-rw-  1 martin mkpasswd 102 Nov 30 23:09 myfifo
> The fifo is made correctly and shown as such, but has a file size of
> 102 which is <>0, so not, what I would have expected.
> It would be nice if Cygwin could store these files in the same way as
> SFU. And Samba could then convert the SFU method to real device and
> fifo files on the disk. For the cifs client, work has begun to include
> the SFU way:
> http://lists.samba.org/archive/linux-cifs-client/2005-November/001073.html
> The only thing one could discuss is how to store symlinks. Cygwin's
> symlinks can be followed in Windows Explorer, whereas SFU symlinks are
> more consistent, as they are named exactly the same on the
> underlying disk, no .lnk appended.


I would only point out that Cygwin does things this way to maintain
compatability with FAT32 which doesn't support magic file types on the disk. 
So the only way to do it is as normal files with special contents or
attributes.  I do believe however that Cygwin compiled apps (samba etc) will
respect Cygwin's magic files.


-- 
Chris Wagner
CBTS
GE Aircraft Engines
Chris.Wagner at ae.ge.com