Directory listing hangs if links can not be followed.

[Martin Rootes]

I've just come across a problem that had me baffled for a bit. We supply students with 
diskspace via a Solaris machine running Samba (2.0.6). Yesterday, I got a report that a couple 
of students could not access their diskspace, although at login time the drive was getting 
mapped. The problem was that if they tried to view the contents of the directory (explorer or dir) 
the process would hang for a minute or two and then report that the drive was inaccessible. 
Looking through the students directories and checking the codes out (several more had 
appeared before I solved the problem), I discovered that what they all had in common was that 
they were doing a Unix course, which had involved them setting up links to a subdirectory of a 
lecturers home directory. The problem was that that directory was not visible on the samba 
server. Allowing the server to access this directory cured the problem but highlights a potential 
problem: If a link points to an object that cannot be accessed then directory operations seem to 
be affected. Is there anyway to make samba ignore links if it can't resolve them?

	Martin.

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Martin Rootes - Senior Systems Programmer/Analyst, Sheffield Hallam University
Email :         M.Rootes at shu.ac.uk
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