Reporting broken symlinks to clients

[Jeremy Allison]

On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 06:29:08PM -0400, Ira Cooper wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 6:27 PM, Christof Schmitt <
> christof.schmitt at us.ibm.com> wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 12:37:24PM -0700, Jeremy Allison wrote:
> > > > This could be useful in environments where the same directory is
> > > > accessible to Windows clients and to Linux/Unix systems. When a
> > > > broken symlink is created, the Windows clients would at least be able
> > > > to see that there is a file.
> > > >
> > > > Comments?
> > >
> > > What is the goal of presenting the broken links to the Windows clients ?
> > >
> > > I'm trying to understand the use case here.
> >
> > I will try to get some more details. The main point would be that the
> > client sees that a file exists, even if it is not accessible. If i
> > remember correctly, this is from an application that accesses the same
> > share through cifs and nfs, the links are only valid on the nfs client
> > systems, and the existence of the symbolic link is used to determine
> > the behaviour of the application.
> 
> 
> 
> One of the simpler use cases is removal of a directory recursively.  If
> there's a symlink in the directory the windows client can't find.  It can't
> remove it, and then it can't remove the directory.

Seeting "hide unreadable" will allow the broken link to be deleted.

Jeremy.