smbfs: file link permission

[Urban Widmark]

On Thu, 27 Jul 2000 oliver.amft at ch.abb.com wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> i've mounted a WinNT4 share with smbmount 2.0.5a (Linux 2.2.13). All works fine:
> authentification via username & domain, even file creation, but somehow i get an
> error when i'm trying to create a file link with "ln" (equaly soft- or hard
> link): "ln: cannot create symbolic link: Operation not permitted." I've set the
> create modes and masks to 777 but it doesn't really help. So, what's wrong?

smbfs doesn't handle hardlinks or symlinks because that concept does not
exist in the smb protocol family (I assume, if it does then someone please
point me).


Alexander Oelzant has a "symlink hack" here:
http://prawda.oeh.net/~aoe/mystuff/smb.symlinks/smb.symlinks.html

This patch will probably not apply cleanly to a 2.2.13 kernel source tree
(and if it did it may not work). If you want to test this it is safest to
do so with the versions the patch was made for (2.3.99 -> 2.4.0-test4?).


I haven't really looked at it but it looks like he has borrowed stuff from
ncpfs (which is what I always do, so I like it :). The patch adds an
option that will allow you to create "faked" symlinks on the smbfs mount.
You will only be able to use them from clients that understand them (ie
currently a patched smbfs).

One thing that might be neat to do is to make the symlink format
compatible with the format that the cygwin tools on 95/NT uses (I don't
remember how they did it but it is similar, special permission & magic
value). That would allow you to make a symlink on a mount and by using the
cygwin tools you would be able to see it on the server too.

/Urban