[Samba] deleting symlinks only

Antonio Nikolic antonio.nikolic at ibk-consult-gmbh.de
Tue Feb 4 15:27:36 GMT 2003


thank you, kurt
hello list
hello samba-team

well, maybe for most application this workaround would work. But from
the unix-point of view replacing a symbolic link with a windows-link is
like replacing a car with a donkey... Why should someone create a
symlink on a sambaserver which let's say is used by windowsclients only,
if one just could have created a windows-link even more easily. It's the
total difference between both. With a unix-link, you don't have to
worry whether your application is able to follow windows-links the way you
expect it, it simply works, and you don't need to maintain additional
shares, it's accessrights etc - ok, but this is not the point [this indeed
could be extended to a debate on principles ;-) ]
The point is, that sometimes you just effectively need directories and
no links, but there is no way to copy stuff - as it is in our case:
the samba-server is a former nfs-server and the application running on
windows formerly used to run on IRIX and now was ported to windows using
hummingbird (btw.: the app. now beats the expensive SGIs in speed
immensively), which means that in fact it still is a unix-application
which has no idea of how to treat windows-links.

So: Is there not a way, to teach samba (maybe in a future-release) to
first check on recieving a deletion request whether or not a directory
possibly is a link and delete the link only? One could introduce an
per-share-option which allows to switch on this feature. I doubt this
could be that hard to realize, is it?

greetings
Antonio Nikolic

________________________________________________________________________
Kurt, Tuesday, February 04, 2003, 1:40:09 PM:
>>==============================================

> Antonio Nikolic wrote:
>> hello list,
>> 
>> is it possible to delete a symlinked directory over a samba-share, without deleting
>> it's content but leaving the link-target as it is and deleting the
>> symlink only? If I interpret samba's behaviour correctly, on deletion samba does not
>> recognize the link as a link but as a directory, descends into it and deletes the

> the problem is, that the client does not recognize, that this is only a 
> link:
> the files in there will be deleted *first*. then it deletes the link...
> but u can try a workaround (e.g.):
> u have a directory "all" and a share "home". u want to point from all 
> homes to "all":

> create a share "all" in samba. - then create a link in *windows* to 
> \\<server>\all
> this link u copy to all "home" shares. - the client can change to "all", 
>   but if he deletes the link - nothing will happen...
> disadvantage: he only comes back with the "back" button in his browser, 
> not with the "up" button.

> i hope it helped
> gk

>> content recursively, finally tries to delete the directory which is none
>> and stops. So all what is left in the end, is an empty directory and a
>> link pointing to it...
>> 
>> Setting the userpermissions is no solution for us as users have
>> to have full access to the content. We are using samba 2.2.7a on IRIX.
>> 
>> The symlinked directories are used as libraries, which are being linked
>> to from different project-directories. If a project is finished, the
>> link to the libraries must be deleted by the users.
>> 
>> any hint would be helpful,
>> thx
>> 
>> Antonio Nikolic
>> 
>> ________________________________________________________________________
>> 
>> eMail:     antonio.nikolic at ibk-consult-gmbh.de
>>            info at ibk-consult-gmbh.de
>> 
>> Internet:  http://www.ibk-consult.com
>> 
>> IBK Ingenieurconsult für Maschinenbau GmbH
>> Kornstr. 17-21
>> 30167 Hannover
>> 



>>==============================================



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