[Samba] Re: symbolic link problem

[Jeremy]

Tobias Bluhm <tobias.bluhm <at> philips.com> writes:

> 
> Jeremy wrote on 06/29/2005 05:38:11 AM:
> 
> >  Hi All,
> > 
> >         I'm having some annoying problems with symbolic links. I'm not
> >         certain they relate to samba but hopefully sone here can help
> >         anyway.
> > 
> >        I have a linux ( Mandrake 10.1 ) machine sharing various 
> directories
> >        ( samba 3.0.7 ) with a network of linux ( also MDK 10.1 ) and 
> windows
> >        machines.
> > 
> >        Within the shared directories are a number of symbolic links to
> >        files both inside and outside the shared directory ( follow 
> symlinks
> >        and wide links are both set to yes )
> > 
> >        accessing these directories from a windows client all is wellbut, 
> when
> >        I try to access them from Linux, the symbolic links do not work.
> >        After an hour or two of confusion I realised that it is looking 
> for the
> >        linked directory on the client machine rather than the server.
> > 
> >        So for example ,on the client, when in directory 
> /mnt/server1/dir1
> >        there is a symlink to a directory on server1 ( ln -s /home/fred 
> fred ).
> >        if I do 'cd fred' it fails because /home/fred does not exist on 
> the
> >        client.
> 
> You've described your problem right there - linux clients have no access 
> to server:/home. If client:/home is empty and not used for local client 
> storage and you deem server:/home is okay for everyone to access on the 
> clients, nfs mount server:/home on client:/home.
> 
> What I've found to be easy on the users is to map the smb share to drive 
> X:, then make an automount point /X on the linux boxes that mounts the 
> same stuff. This way, "X" represents the same data to windows & linux 
> users. Soft links & automount maps fill in any complicated directory 
> schemes. 
> 
> -----------------------------------------------------
> toby bluhm
> philips medical systems, cleveland ohio
> tobias.bluhm <at> philips.com
> 440-483-5323


 Hi,

   Maybe I confused the issue by not specifying the real paths.
   The symbolic links I am using are not actually to anything under
   /home, most are to external scsi disks under /mnt

   I need these external disks to be visible from a number of
   other servers.
 
   As for setting up nfs in the way described I was wondering 
   whether something like that was required. The only strange
   thing is that symlinks on an old debian server we have here
   work exactly as I want them too, but I can't seem to find out
   what it is that makes them work ( NFS does not seem to be 
   set up on the debian ).

                                         thanks,
                                            Jeremy