[Samba] Unable to follow dfs referral - still a problem for smbclient & also freebsd smbfs

[werner maes]

	hello

I'm also interested to know whether this patch has made it to smbclient.


Hi,

Does anyone know if there has been any more progress on the problem of
browsing 'complex dfs roots'
see http://lists.samba.org/archive/smb-clients/2006-February/000622.html

Basically it occurs whenever you have a Microsoft Distributed File System
Tree where the links are to subfolders of the destination share.
Microsoft clients have no trouble browsing such trees.

The Samba HOWTO only gives an example of the basic case where the link
happens to be directly to the 'share folder' of the destination
i.e
--------------------------------
root# cd /export/dfsroot
root# ln -s msdfs:storageA\\shareA linka

in smb.conf...
[global]
netbios name = GANDALF
host msdfs = yes

[dfs]
path = /export/dfsroot
msdfs root = yes
-------------------------------

But if you try instead:

root# ln -s msdfs:storageA\\shareA\mydata linka

Then if you mount \\GANDALF\dfs  using smbfs - you can't get into the linka
folder.

Using smbclient - when you try to cd to that folder you'd get a delay and
then:
Connection to storageA\shareA failed
Unable to follow dfs referral [//storageA\shareA/mydata]
cd \linka\: NT_STATUS_PATH_NOT_COVERED

As indicated above - in a windows explorer you can browse to and beyond this
DFS referral point.

I see there was an attempt at patching this a while back - but it may not
have been a complete solution and never seems to have made it into samba.
http://lists.samba.org/archive/samba-technical/2006-April/046454.html

It seems to me that FreeBSD is pretty crippled as a client for samba
networks because of this.. you just can't mount or browse such a network
properly. (These sorts of trees can't be that uncommon.. what are people
using for this... sharity??)
Maybe Linux can do it with it's mount.cifs capability.. Has anyone tried it?

Cheers,
Julian



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